Welcome Home

When the dirt goes away the house becomes a home. Completing Jane and Craig's this week was priority and the crew came through with shining colors.

It was a busy week at Jane and Craig's irrigation, driveway poured, landscape completion and sod installation. Lots of dust, noise and fumes mixed with high humidity and clear skies the perfect storm allowing everything to finally come together. We were all right behind each other literally, Brian King poured on Tuesday, Terry got irrigation underway and by Wednesday we were on sight to finish landscaping odds and ends, mulch and prepare for sod

On Thursday when the first load of sod from Trelan Supply in Fremont arrived we were ready lakeside and grading our way out. We still had to install a bit of dirt around the driveway and were putting it in as fast as King's men were pulling forms. Meanwhile Terry (irrigation) had started lakeside and was blocking the south yard with equipment even as Tim from the sod farm was running sod down the north side. Outstanding timing but a bit hectic as Terry literally pulled his machine out just as we were ready to start positioning sod down the south side of the house

Working a crew of 12 on a job makes a huge difference and in no time at all we started to turn it green. It was necessary to chew up the dirt with the TR3 on our Dingo before we started sodding even though we had a fair grade with the exception of areas where Terry was plowing in lines. The reason we chew it up and grade it again is because of compaction, we have been running equipment over the ground for a month, before us the builder was running heavy equipment and in between all that don't forget the dredging of the channel and the large track hoe and dump trucks. So in order to give the sod a fighting chance we tilled twice.

Privacy was an issue for Jane and Craig since they live next door to the public access for the lake. There is an existing tree line between them and the parking lot with maples, pines, poison ivy, grape vine and assorted native plants. The brush is good and bad, the foliage mass does a good job of screening but some of the less desirable plants are not only unkempt but will give most people a bit of a rash. To combat that and help define the property we installed additional fence and seven large viburnum, 3 hemlocks over six foot, a couple of pyramidal arborvitae and four rotunda boxwood. The effect is a winning, multi-layered hedge with year round appeal and good wildlife food and cover. Much of this work was add on and difficult as we were planting in the shadows of mature tree roots.

Now with most of the work completed, the BBQ done and the sod down I can almost smell the grilling and hear the laughter as Jane, Craig, Kurt, Megan, the grand kids and Lola enjoy the 4th of July weekend.