It's Yard Time

 After pouring all of that concrete for the sidewalk, and planting out the bed by the road, it really has defined the part of the landscape that should be grass. Only problem is there's not a lot of plantable dirt there, it's all at the wrong elevation after the concrete went down, there is a large bed that still needs to be graded and planted, and of course, more concrete to pour.

The big reveal here is that this yard grading & seeding happened over Memorial Day weekend. All of that concrete actually herniated a disc in my back, I think. It started feeling bad then, so I thought running the tiller to grade the yard down and get the grass planted while it was still spring-like would be a good idea. I thought it was bad (my back pain, that is), but then it got so much worse. After this, I couldn't sit upright without some extreme pain, so I went to the chiropractor - my usual first step. He said I might need a Prednisone dosepack from the family doc so I went there the next week. Took the dosepack, got no relief, doc said I needed an orthopedist. So the next week went to see the ortho, he ordered an MRI. The next week the MRI showed an L5/S1 disk herniation. Basically a couple of vertabrae came together and pinched off a chunk of disc, and that floating chunk was shoving pressure onto the sciatic nerve that sent shooting burning pain all the way down my left leg and my left foot is numb. It took 5 weeks to get the options. I ended up getting acupuncture, 9 treatments and it had the symptoms almost completely gone. 95% gone. Then later it came roaring back about 3 weeks ago, and round 2 was much worse than the original. I had about 3 weeks of relief where I still couldn't actually do anything, but I had other people doing the dirty work for me. When round 2 kicked in, I couldn't stand up or sit upright. I was prone on the couch and that was all I could do. I could walk about 10 steps to the bathroom, but afterwards my left leg would not be able to support my bodyweight and I would spend the next few minutes crying on the bathroom floor until I was able to recover and get back to the couch. And that was the extent of the world for about 10 straight days. Eventually I did get a 2nd MRI, followed by surgery this past friday, 9/11/20. The surgery removed the floating chunk and the pain was instantly gone. Now the incision site is still a bit inflamed, but it feels so much better, and 6 weeks from now I'll actually be able to get back to woodworking and landscaping. Until then I'll just keep blogging about the stuff that is already in the queue. But this entire summer was shot thanks to a back injury, and I'm done running for good thanks to the nerve damage in my leg. 

For the yard, I started with the tiller. We have a ton of clover growing, but not as much grass as I would like. The stone walkway had to finally all get removed, and I wanted to have solid grass across the entire yard. The boat that was on the stone walkway got moved to another part of the yard, and I accommodated that with the grass area. Also there was a lot of mud and clay that got removed when I built the porch that kind of rounded over outside of the sidewalk. Nothing will grow on this stuff, so I have to grade it down and chop that clay into the better topsoil, and use that to fill in the ditch left by the stone walkway and the drainage ditch that got buried. After that I spread centipede seed and covered the whole thing with wheat straw. 

Graded the soil down to the concrete

Raining in my tiller job

New drain worked great

I need some rocks for that downspout

Finished tilling up the weird parts of the yard

Straw is ready to go, I used 4 bales

Straw is down and watered in

Mulch borders the sidewalk and grass

I kept trying to get the right angle

We also bought and planted a weeping cherry tree!

The new street view

Also added the yeti back to the bed

That's not a bad way to spend Memorial Day weekend, really. I wanted to get more of the sidewalk poured before planting the seed, but I also wanted to plant the seed earlier in the spring than that. It was great to be able to use more of the chips to mulch those beds. And I'm sure having too much clover in the yard means something important about the soil PH, but I'm not sure what that is. I know the clover kept clogging up my tiller - that was painful. And I know over the summer, while I was down with a bad back, the grass kept growing, and it turned out great.