Tom Sawyer with Topsoil

We've had an amazing day. It was beautiful outside, a perfect opportunity to start some yard work. We went to the local garden center and found out that they could deliver a cubic yard of dirt TODAY. We thought that would be perfect for the hole situation in the back yard, as portrayed here:

Last fall, I partly filled in the holes with leaves, but it kinda made the holes into tiger-trap like pits, covered in a deceptive layer of leaves, leading to a few twisted ankles.

We prepared the way by making a tarp-based delivery chute covering the steps that lead from the driveway (where the truck would be dumping our dirt) to the backyard (where we needed the dirt).

We bought a new wheelbarrow for the job. We own a wheelbarrow. We're officially grown-ups.

And here's our giant pile of dirt


While we were waiting for the delivery, a couple of the boys across the street (5th-grader Junior and his brother, 3rd grader Demetri) came over because they were having trouble with their bikes. Jake helped them out and got both bikes going again. The kids were very happy, and suddenly wanted to join in the dirt shoveling. Shortly after, another boy, 7-year-old "Tiny" stopped by to see what was going on. He actually ran home, got himself a shovel, and joined the madness. His 10-year-old brother, Isaiah, showed up shortly thereafter, followed by 13-year old Ariana (Junior & Demetri's sister) and 12-year old Deanna. They demanded tools, and joined in shoveling and hauling and pounding and shoveling and hauling and dumping and arranging the dirt. It was insane.




We kept telling them to go have fun and ride their bikes, but they just wanted to shovel the dirt (and play with the dog, and roll around in the dirt, and throw the dirt, and play with the wheelbarrow and generally run around in our yard).





To be honest, I have no idea how we would have accomplished this job without them. I know there were some serious labor law violations here, but man, those kids were amazing! They stayed around for THREE HOURS helping. We actually had to send them home finally. We did give them lemonade and cheez-its, but that's an insanely low hourly wage. The thing is, there is no way these kids would have done this if their parents told them to. [In fact, Jake has talked to Junior before, when he wandered over here after his mom gave him a chore to do and he didn't feel like doing it.] But once they saw other kids shoveling dirt, they thought it was the coolest thing. We even tried to talk them out of it, but they were totally into it. I've never seen anything like it.