So first thing we had to do was remove the two dwarf palm trees that were planted in the back yard and move them to the front yard. Easier said than done. There was a lot of rock that had to dug out of the way first. Generally you put rock down on top of soil in Arizona to protect it from the sun. Except that our house is 47 years old… which means multiple owners have put down layers of rock to protect their yard over the decades, so there was up to six inches of loose rock that had to come up first. Oh… and sometimes the original construction company just left giant blocks of concrete out of the way.
Then we had to actually extract the dwarf palms out of the ground. Easier said than done. We had to do this in two stages, Thursday night, when the sun had just gone done but was still 102 degrees outside, and Friday morning, when the temperature was only 85, but the sun was coming over the buildings to shine on us (and raise the temp).
So I’m sweating buckets as take out an entire wheelbarrow full of loose rock to the front of the house (where thankfully, two wet holes are already dug for the palms), and slowly… SLOWLY… dig out the two plants. They had so many frickin’ roots that were all over. Oh, and we had to find and dig around all the gorram irrigation lines and what I hope was the regular water line and the fence with the crabby ol’ neighbor and… sigh, it was frustrating.
However, mission accomplished… well, the first palm came out, and when we realized it was almost 8 pm, we figured… eh, this can wait until tomorrow. So we sweated and heaved again and the second one out. NOW, have two good sized holes to use as our first sunken garden beds. Now just 80 more square feet to dig up… ugh.
So what home improvement project did your spouse/significant other convince you to dump a lot of time in? Share it in the comments below!
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