Saturday, May 12, 2012

What's under my lawn?

Since I've watered my front and back lawn several times this week it's greening up nicely.  I know it means I'm going to be mowing more than two or three times a year but to not have the foxtails on the animals or the grand kids clothes will make it all worth the extra time.  This evening I was moving the back sprinkler that's in the middle of the lawn.  I only have one sprinkler for the back and it pretty well covers the lawn which is about 80 or 90 feet square.  I moved it before I turned it on because it wasn't quite reaching the patio.  About a ten foot strip wasn't getting watered.  I must have moved it too much because the patio was soaked when I looked at it about 30 minutes later.  I turned the water off and moved it again.  I tried pushing the stake into the ground.  It wouldn't go more than 2 inches.  It sounded like I hit a rock.  I moved it a few inches away, hit something again.  Moved it a little more, hit something again.  I dug through the wet lawn and felt the rock.  It wasn't a rock.  It felt like cement.  I have no clue what is under my lawn. 

When I moved in 15 years ago the yard was split in half with a bunch of plants enclosing the lawn area to about 25 feet.  There were a couple of stepping stones but we moved them off the lawn when we tore those plants out.  I think this is further out and not related to those stepping stones.  I wonder if there was some buried path?  I hope it's a cistern.  Wouldn't that be fantastic?  It was dark out so I couldn't do much about it.  Hopefully we will get home early enough for me to take a look at the yard and try to figure out what's under the lawn.  Wouldn't it be nice if it was a buried treasure? 

Tomorrow we are going over to Army daughter's for Mother's Day.  Son and his wife are coming over too.  Oldest daughter isn't.  She is doing something with her husband and their four kids.  Her oldest is graduating high school at the end of the month and she's thinking this will be their last holiday with everyone home.  She frets too much but I can understand her wanting to have a celebration there.  

For dinner tonight we had left over home grown and butchered chicken made into a pot pie.  We added some canned carrots from a couple years ago, potatoes dug out of the garden this morning, and peas from the garden.  We had a side dish of home grown artichokes.  For dessert we had home made frozen yogurt with strawberries from the front yard blended in. 

I got an email from the feds saying that my application met their qualifications and it was being sent to some other office for review.  They will pick the top three for an interview.  Considering it's promotional or new hire and they take into consideration veterans credits I doubt I'll be in the top three.  Who knows?  Perhaps I will get to make that trip to Utah to pick up food storage items in person and paying in cash - oh yeah, and interview for the job.  I still haven't decided if I'd take the job if it was offered. 

I still like my job but with the Governor announcing the state is going to have a 16 billion dollar deficit next year there will be layoffs and the workload will increase once again making work a highly stressful place.  It's not that the state can't reduce its budget but it can't reduce its budget.  Every time they try someone sues and that item can't be reduced until the suit is over, which seems like never. 

Anyway, none of that matters at the moment.  I can't do anything about the Utah job nor about the state budget.  What matters is we are going to have home grown eggs and home grown juice for breakfast tomorrow.  What matters is tomorrow is Mother's Day...Happy Mother's Day, mom! 

2 comments:

  1. It's always "fun" to discover what has grass grown over. 20 years ago when we started our first garden we knew the side yard where we were starting was a former driveway. What we soon discovered was the grass was growing in 4 inches of soil placed over 3/4" rock. We also discovered as we continued to expand our gardening efforts in the yard, this was the former owners method of covering ground they didn't want to grow. 4" of soil over 6" of rock.

    We often think we have all the rock up when we find another spot we've missed. Have "fun" with the discovery.

    ReplyDelete
  2. We're waiting with baited breath.

    Hubby and I bought some property and found a well. Unfortunatly it wasn't usable and a real headache to deal with to cover. I, too live in California! Hope you find something good or useful or exciding or all the above.

    PS been enjoying your post for a few weeks now. Thank you

    ReplyDelete