Window Wells and Fill Dirt

Today was the day I have been waiting for, for about 12 years. When we bought our house, the east side of the house had old crappy mulch in beds next to the house. We replaced the mulch soon after we moved in, only to be plagued with Carpenter ants trying to destroy our home. The mulch/bark wasn't the only cause, (old wet masonite siding, lack of maintenance, etc), but once we got the ants, the mulch got removed too. Since then, we have needed to refill the space with dirt. I am not a gardener, or I could have had pretty flowers there for years, or rocks, but since outdoor gardening is not my 'thing', it was just left empty, and we had to 'step down' to that level when we mowed. It was quite a drop, and easy for the lawn mower blade to cut into the edge of the lawn.

When we put in our new Egress basement windows this year, we decided to do the window wells too, and fill the dirt back in against the house. Now, water has never been a problem, because we have quite an overhang of soffit, but it just needed to be done to be done RIGHT.

So, here is how today went..........Believe it or not, we had the truck borrowed before we knew where we were going to get our dirt! We drove around and looked for dirt, and we had a couple possibilities from friends, but those options didn't end up working out. We called another friend of ours who does a lot of home improvements, and jobs on the side, hoping maybe he would have a source for us. He did! He is one of our city Police Officers, and he puts on a lot of miles patroling the city, and he knew JUST where there was a nice BIG pile of dirt, with a big sign with a phone number on it. We jumped in the truck, found the pile, and called the number. The dirt was owned by a man who lives in a small town about 20 miles from here. He asked for $10 a truck load, and to just mail him a check when we knew we had all we needed. PRAISE THE LORD!!!!

Here is a photo of Louie's little brother Walter, and Louie. Walter came over and was a BIG help. Thank you, Walter! You would not believe how BIG this dirt pile is! All they did was basically scrape layers off the edge, and with what we used, it barely even made a dent! We ended up getting three pickup loads. It doesn't look like much of a load, but look how much it weighed down the truck!Here is where Louie is starting the job. We had the Lennox dealer come raise up the air conditioning unit on Friday.Here is a picture of the other two windows before Louie started on them.We moved a couple bricks down by the steps at the corner of the house, and look who was hiding there and keeping cool! Louie moved the little fella across the yard and put him under our neighbor's deck.Many, many wheel barrels trips were made today from the driveway to the east side of the house.We bought ten bags of rock and a post hole digger, and rented a wheel barrel and ground tamper.My sister-in-law Bobbi helped too. She likes to garden, and I guess all that dirt just could not make her sit still. Then, some friends of theirs stopped by, and Gary helped too.Here, Bobbi and Monica are supervising. Can you see the concern on their faces?Window wells are complete, and all the dirt is in place. Yippee!!!.........After this picture, Louie put down some grass seed.We also used some dirt to fill in on top of one of our retaining walls.Here's my sweetie as I finish this post. He said, "I'm just going to sit down for a few minutes and rest before I jump in the shower." I KNOW he's 'just resting his eyes'....yep, that's what he's doing. What a guy, what a guy!!! I love him more than life itself. I wouldn't trade him for all the finest treasures in the world. He was hand picked by God for ME, and I am thankful.

'"Come unto Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden in light."

Matthew 11:28-30