July 17th - We got sod.

And not as in the rude UK phrase, sod as in grass. Oh my heavens to betsy. We still had a good amount to do on Friday and the sod was supposed to come late that afternoon. We needed to re-plant our trees. They were too low, which you would think isn't a problem BUT we found out that if they are too low, the water sits on top of the roots and will actually rot your roots. If you plant it just above ground level, the water is able to run down the tree flare so the tree only takes what it needs. 

Skylar needed to finish some stuff with the valve box. I honestly don't even know what it was. He also dug out the end of our down spouts to pour gravel underneath so that when they drain it doesn't get clogged by the dirt. 

In addition to that we still needed to till the south side of the yard, and rake and weed everything on that side. By noon, we saw other neighbors getting their sod. And every time a truck came by, we were worried. We weren't ready yet! It must have been national sod day because we had 3 other neighbors laying their sod on Friday. 

We finished getting the yard all ready and actually had time to sit and relax for a bit before the sod came. No one ever told me how heavy those suckers were. Holy moly. 

What we started off with on Friday

 After we finished tilling, raking, and weeding

That's what 5,000 square feet of sod looks like

 After we were mostly done laying sod

Our estimation wasn't too bad on how much sod we needed. We had one extra pallet after we had finished laying sod everywhere we had prepped. The next morning, Jon got up at the crack of dawn before me and Skylar, tilled a little farther back in the yard, raked it up, moved the entire extra pallet with the wheel barrel and even cleaned all our scraps up that we left laying around the yard. What a man. 

The morning after, once we had cut all the excess, finished laying all the extra sod and cleaned up a bit

 All the rocks from our yard thus far and the sod pallets hanging out in the back

Special thanks for all those who helped. Our neighbors for watching kids, for coming to help lay sod, to our family for coming to help get us ready for our lawn.

Welp. I think for this year we are just about done. Toward the end of the season, we may look to see if any of the other trees we had planned for the back yard are on sale. We need to put mulch around the trees to help them keep moist but other than that, we are done for now! More to come next summer.