Grass!

It all started on Thursday, September 29th, when we rented this machine to dig the trenches and pull the pipe for our sprinkler system.

After we trenched about 20 holes, the machine broke.  The chain came off and the whole gear assembly for the trencher was extremely loose.  We weren't doing anything wrong; I think the machine was just old and beat up.  So, the rental place came out to pick up that machine and bring us a new one with 2 attachments - a trencher and a pipe puller.  Travis was so much happier with this machine as shown by the huge smile on his face.  It made digging the trenches go so much faster.  We were able to get all the trenches dug for our sprinklers and pull about 3000 feet of 1 inch poly pipe for our sprinkler lines in just that one (long) day.

We put in a lot of nights and weekends installing all the sprinklers and getting the whole sprinkler system hooked up.  We had a total of 15 zones and to reduce the distance that the water would have to run, we installed about 10 valve and manifold boxes.  Unfortunately, we had to run electrical wire to all of those boxes.  In hindsight, we would have liked to trench the feeder pipe rather than pull it because we had to hand dig almost 900 feet of dirt so we could bury the electrical wire.  We were really nervous as to whether we would have enough water pressure to run 6 sprinklers at a time and one of the runs was over 300 feet long.  We were able to test it on Saturday and after a little trial and error with the sprinkler control boxes, we got the sprinklers to work.  We only had to replace one faulty valve, one small section of pipe that was clogged with dirt, and one nozzle in a sprinkler, so we felt we did pretty good.  There was still quite a bit of work to be done before we actually layed sod on Monday and the first load (10,000 square feet) was delivered on Saturday.  I'm really glad the sod place didn't tell me that we weren't even close to ready on Saturday because I was already stressed to the max!  There are a few pallets on the other side of the driveway, but here was the delivery from Saturday...

We had 13 people help lay sod on Monday and it took about 2 1/2 hours to lay the first 10,000 square feet.  We were very fortunate that the weather cooperated because it had been so rainy, windy, and muddy just a couple of days before.

After a delicious lunch of steaks, brats, and salads, we got our second load of sod - another 10,000 square feet and it was all laid by 3:30!

Mocha was so happy with all of her grass and Travis and I feel so much relief because everything feels so much more finished.  We have been waiting and working towards this milestone all summer and we finally did it.  We can't thank our helpers enough for all their hard work.  I never would have imagined the sod would go down that quick.  Here's hoping for another couple weeks of nice weather so our sod can look this good come spring!