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The end of the weekend is here and our backyard is officially done. Sort of.

Friday Sarah began the arduous task of moving the rolled up grass out of the yard. We finished that on Saturday morning. Have you any idea how much grass a 15′ X 30′ yard can contain? About 16 tons, and what do you get? Another day older….

Anyway, once the grass was gone it was off to the rental place for a tiller. An hour and a half, and three good passes, and the hard lumpy ground was soft, tilled-up goodness. Still lumpy though. We returned the tiller and picked up a landscaping rake to help get the lumps out and (hopefully) make the water run away from the house and towards the flower bed at the back of the yard. Visually speaking, it looks like we succeeded.

After 8 hours of solid work yesterday, today went pretty smoothly. We finished raking and shoveling and re-raking till the lumps were gone and the grade looked good. Another trip to the Rental Center and I came back with the yard roller - filled with water it’s a 250 lbs. compacting tool of the gods.

A couple of passes with the roller showed us a few spots that needed some work - and some dirt - but within about an hour or so, presto! One even yard. I must say, it looks pretty good.

Since we are suppose to get some rain over the next couple of days we’ve decided to hold off on seeding. We figured the rain will show us if our grading job worked. If not, we can fix it and seed next weekend.

We rolled up our backyard yesterday. Literally. And it looks better already.

I know I said we were going to do this whole yard thing over the weekend, but something came up. We have new neighbors across the street. Wednesday Steve and Dana (new neighbors) were cutting up their front yard with a handy dandy sod cutter. Well, Sarah and I went for a little walk, they said “hi,” we introducted ourselves and set about small talk.

“Looks like fun,” I said. “Funny thing, we were going to do the same thing to our backyard on Saturday. Were’d you rent the cutter?”

Steve replied, “Well, I work at a golf course — I just borrowed it from work.”

“That’s handy. We called around a couple of places to rent them….”

“When were you going to do it? This weekend? I could probably bring the cutter back for you,” Steve offered.

Then we looked at each other and said, “Of course, we could just do it right now.”

A few short minutes later, voila! One cut up backyard. And while Steve was slicing our turf, Sarah helped Dana pick up their front yard.

Now ours is in neat little rolls, stacked along the driveway. The yard waste disposal company is going to love us as they haul away a ton of dirt and grass over the next few weeks.

Tomorrow, we just need to clean up the bits of yard that didn’t get cut, rent a tiller and turn everything over. That should give me a few inches of loose dirt with which to regrade. Ah, home ownership.

They only other mini project I have - that I’ve almost forgotten about - is my bansai. Sarah bought me a little seed-starter kit for my birthday, but I don’t really know what to do with it. Kristen? Help? Anyone?

Today is Bring-Your-Noisey-Child-to-Work-So-No one-can-Actually-Do Anything-Day. So I’m working at home. I love flexible hours and work-at-home capabilities.

Tuesday’s are my T’ai Chi night - corrections and push hands classes. And, as of last night, sword. It is, well, different — kind of like doing the form, kind of like playing push hands, but really neither. And at this point I don’t actually know the steps, so it’s very much confusing. But when there were 5 of us doing the first couple of moves all in unision it looked awesome.

This also means that I’m going to be rather tired on Wednsdays. I left the house for T’ai Chi at 6:00 pm yesterday and didn’t get home until a bit after 10:00 pm. I normally go to bed at 10:00 because I get up at 5:00 am. Being worn out from some 3 hours of T’ai Chi, that 5:00 alarm was a bit tough to handle. I hit snooze way too many times. Luckily I can’t actually be late for work…. (Odd thing, even sleeping in a extra 1/2 or so and leaving the house 15 - 20 minutes later than normal, I still made it to work about my normal time. How does that happen?)

In Other News:

Not much. The patio is now just an empty spot where bricks once lay. This weekend, hopefully, we are renting a rototiller and sod cutter and attacking the backyard. The plan (I believe I’ve mention it before): take that lump over there and move it to here and around that a bit. In general, make water flow away from house and garage. The ex-patio bricks will find a new use as small retaining walls and what-nots as needed. Eventually, I think I’m going to build a small, free-standing round deck.

Well, I suppose I should actually get back to work now….

We had a great time in Niagara. The hotel was mediocre, but we didn’t spend much time in it anyway. The power of the falls is truely amazing. The river flows so serenely yet violently at the same time. Right at the brink the water looks like liquid glass, just gracefully sliding along. A few short feet later it erupts into a powerful spay. Then, below the falls, all is calm for a while as the river resumes its course.

A couple of kilometers from the falls are some of the most powerful rapids I have ever seen. The energy in the Niagara River over those falls is monumental. Standing along side, I could feel the calm energy of it all as it hurried its way along down steam.

We, of course, did all of the tourist things. At least the ones open at this time of year. The Maid of the Mist wasn’t running yet, and not all of the boardwalks down by the falls were open. But that was OK. We took the elevator down behind the Horseshoe falls and decended to the Gorge; went to the butterfly garden (over 2,000 butterflies); did a little hiking at a park along the river; marched up and down Clifton Hills too many times.

That is a strange area. Clifton Hills is full of tourist things, but mostly haunted houises. There has to be 4-5 different haunted attractions on one stretch of road. I convinced Sarah to go through one with me -Frankenstien’s House (or whatever). It was really lame. Basically, it was a twisting hallway with all of the lights turned out. Nothing jumped out at us, no one attempted to scare us. It was like they hadn’t turned everything on yet. Very dissappointing.

Today, we killed the patio. And that’s about it. Well, I poked the race car a couple of times - and it poked back. Now that the weather has gotten a bit nicer I’ve got to find the electrical trouble. It’s getting spark, but just won’t start. Unfortunately the wire that I need to track down is used for pretty much every circuit on the car. It just keeps going and branching off. It is very annoying.