2,400 pounds of topsoil! Yep, that's right. Sixty 40-lb bags are now on my yard, filled with grass seed, watered, and carrying my hopes for a beautiful lawn.

I slept until noon. It would have been longer, but Fancy and Madison were impatient about getting out of their cage for the day since it is the weekend. I reluctantly rolled out of bed, let Kashi outside, and welcomed the day with my birds. For the next two hours, I sat on the couch and channel-surfed, thinking about my lawn.

I have tried twice to create a front yard after the whole sewage pipe fiasco...and failed twice. Of course, now that I have committed to stop murdering as I mow, I thought perhaps just one more try might be worth the labor.

So, I picked up the phone to see if my writing student's brother was available for hard labor. I half hoped he wasn't, but he was. I threw on some clothes and went to pick him up. Gloves in hand, he joined me in the car and off to Lowe's we went. I figured foregoing groceries a while longer (the time of depending on what's in the pantry is nearing an end--I'm running out of stuff) in favor of spending some money on the yard would be a great investment because pulling up to a green lawn each day would be quite a pleasure to me.

Our first trip was 20 bags of top soil and 7 of mulch. I really wanted to mulch the flower bed I created with my best friend and got enough to finish the mulch in the front. Let me tell you, even with my helper, lugging the bags onto the cart, loading them into the car, and then schlepping them across the yard is quite draining and really not much fun. I had thought that 20 bags would do it. Boy, was I wrong.

So with the soil spread out and the mulch in place, we headed back to Lowe's with the ambitious goal of getting 40 more bags of top soil. That is 40 bags to get on the cart, into the car, and onto the yard. When we were checking out, the cashier watched us struggle to move the cart up and then told me that "next time" we could just pay for them and drive around back where someone would load the items into my car. Really, if I were a violent person, I would have slugged her just then. She did call for help to get the bags in the car. So my helper and I had our own help.

40 more bags later, I thought we had sufficient cover to the barren spots in the back and the side yards and all over the front yard. I ran my helper home and came back to start the seeding process. Worried a bit about the birds who've come to enjoy my backyard offerings, I put seed out, worked it into the soil, and covered the soil with seed again. Surely I will get a lawn out of this!

I actually am contemplating making the work of establishing a new lawn a bit harder. I will have to water twice a day, but I am considering keeping Kashi out of the back yard for at least a couple of weeks. Of course, he has already "needed" to be walked three times since I finished my labors. I am not sure I can keep it up, but there were two very barren spots at the bottom of my steps where he regularly lands as he leaps from them to the yard. I am hoping that if I could grow grass there, it might hold up under his enthusiastic coming and goings if given a proper start.

So, here I sit on the couch, weary from my labors, but excited as to the possibility, the potential of this day.