Insta-Lawn

We bought our new house about a year ago from an elderly woman who had been here about 50 years. She was a big gardener and when we got the place the backyard was almost entirely overrun by mature trees and these big wooden planter boxes all over the place. I had a photo at one point of the jungle of a backyard we inherited but for some annoying reason I can't find it right now, although I think I just self-induced a moderate case of carpal tunnel mousing over every digital photo in our Picasa collection looking for it.

Last fall we took down trees and basically ripped everything out, winding up with open space, ground-down stumps and significant dirt. As the spring approached Madison mentioned the condition of the backyard to me a few times and it usually went something like this:

"Daddy, you know what I really miss about the old house?"

"No, what?"

"The grass. Being able to lay in the grass and look up at the sky. Can we have grass like that in the new house?"

At that point the mission was clear, and this week we had the payoff... which arrived in the form of a generous helping of sod. I have to say, this was my first go-round with sod and I've never experienced any form of landscaping that was quite so satisfying.

Our well-compensated and fairly pampered crew (Gwen may be the only homemaker in America who - literally - baked cookies for the landscapers) spent a day ripping up what was left of the back lawn area, laying topsoil and raking it down. And then they spent a second day finishing these preparations and rolling out the sod and when I pulled into the driveway after a long day of work the space that had been a disaster area only hours before had turned into the vision above.

Insta-Lawn.