So, here’s the rest of the big (and potentially tiresome) post about the massive renewal project that has been reinvigorating the home improvement sector here in beautiful downtown Iglooville. (Feel free to ignore this if talk of lawns is enough to make you gag. Keyser would have understood in an earlier incarnation.)

So, here’s the mount of supplies stacked up in front of the garage. After weeks of demolition, now it’s time to build!

One thing that yard work is good for is talking with the neighbors. While Keyser was having one of those conversations with the woman from across the alley that makes young people’s eyes glaze over (“Oh, yes, it’s marvelous that you’ve decided to stop taking down our property values with your negligent upkeep of your property. Now we can bring yours down!”), a hot air balloon flew directly overhead. This isn’t really pertinent, but it’s pretty. A shot right up the old opening. Sort of balloon gynecological view…

Here they’re starting to lay the Allen blocks. Very fussy work, since if you lay them level to begin with, the ones on top go in right, but otherwise it’s all screwed up. The workers were contemptuous of whoever put in the old wall. No gravel foundation at all. Imagine that!

The course is getting longer. Did Mrs. Cheops think, “Geez, all that work so far and this all we’ve got to show for it?”? Anyhoo, note the level. Gotta keep it straight!

Now we are making progress! The upper courses did go up pretty quickly once the foundation was laid, but this was a couple of days after the photo above. Seems like not much was getting accomplished for a while.

This is the back wall along the alley. You can see the first of two step downs because of the drop in the level of the alley. To the left, the wall is the same height as the one along nasty neighbor lady’s wall, but the other side of the yard is lower by the height of three courses of stones. You can see a drop of two courses here, and right to the right it drops another course.

Here Mrs. S. is standing majestically by the far side of the wall by the place where the garbage cans will go. You can’t stick ‘em on the city’s property, so the wall has to make a jog in the corner so the cans will be on the other side of the wall, but still on our property. Anyway, there’s the final step-down of the retaining wall to the lower level on the garage side of the yard.

Here, Max the 18-year-old diabetic cat is posing majestically beside the mock up of the pillar for the gate by the garage.

Here’s the fancy new brick walk way to replace the crappy old cement one (the mock up pillar was by the turn, but now it’s gone). Instead of going to the Emerald City, it just goes to the back porch. “But, Toto, that sure ain’t Kansas!” Note the massive pile of dirt (sorry, top soil) at the right waiting to be leveled out for sod.

Okay, now you’re probably thinking to yourself, “He’s got to be kidding me. That’s the inside of the fucking garage. This is going to far!” Well, perhaps so, but what do you think that it’s now housing a bunch of slate rather than a 2003 Corolla for? Read on (if you dare)!

Hmm. Here’s the sort of hillock underneath what is called in these parts a Manitoba Maple. According to the fount of all human knowledge, it’s scientific name is acer negundo, and it’s got a zillion names. In the US, it’s called a box elder or a maple ash (because it’s a maple that has leaves like an ash). Someone living in Ontario says on Facebook that out there the “arborists” (whatever exactly they may be) say to get rid of these things as “weeds.” Screw them! It’s a fine tree! The ancient guy across the street says that they’re very hardy, and people liked them way back when because they were among the few trees to survive the big drought during the ’30s. Anyway, we guess that it predates the digging of the terrace for our backyard, because otherwise why leave that big drop off rather than leveling the land gradually? So, what do you think they’re going to do with that drop off. Remember the slate in the garage! (That’s Alwyn in the hole, with Clark looking on.)

Yes, the hole was for a water fall! In fact, contractor guy said to Mrs. S., “So, what about a water fall, it’ll look great!” while Keyser was dozing. Mrs. S. instantly said, “Yeah, sounds great, but no,” but she felt duty-bound to tell Keyser anyway. “What?! Boy, that sounds great!” And behold the initial results! You can still see the plastic understuff to keep out the weeks, so it’s got a ways to go. Still, “look upon Keyser’s works, ye mighty!” indeed!

Here’s a close-up of the expensive Montana rock they used. Look how colorful it is! Turns out it’s expensive, too…

And after the foundation, on to the back steps. This wasn’t part of the initial deal at all, but Contractor Guy was great at coming up with additional ways for us to get indebted to the bank.

Meanwhile, the front steps have been partially done for weeks. No one can get up them, and they’re closed off. The black crap on them is just the leftover of some stuff they put under rock gardens to keep out the weeds, and here it’s just a sign of the unusability of the stairs. Anyway, the guys have glued the stones in, but for some idiot reason, when the bottom ones didn’t fit right, instead of making them even, the workers left some uneven extra space on the left. This has been driving Keyser nuts! Will they fix this obvious imperfection? Keyser even wakes up in the middle of the night because of this. It’s this sort of thing that’s been distracting your humble Pannonian from proper blogging for weeks.

Another problem is the overstuffed dumpsters. They put too much cement in them, so the company refuses to take them off until some of the stuff in them is removed. So it has to be added to the pile of crap on the front yard. Not only is this unsightly (Keyser thinks the neighbors can put up with that for a while, but Mrs. S. is anxious about their opinion), but the front lawn can’t be done until this crap is gotten off (there’s no room to dump all the “top soil,” and Mrs. S. is also worried about the pile they dumped on the street). Will dumpsters ever be carted off? Remains to be seen.

Well, here’s what the backyard looks like with piles of dirt. Sort of like the moon. But as noted in an earlier post, you can’t call the stuff dirt. Mrs. S. tried that with Contractor Guy, and he got all offended. It’s “top soil.” Actually, one afternoon, Keyser was out the front with Contractor Guy giving him advice about his martial problems (who knew Keyser would go into that business?), when an Eretrean guy showed up to deliver a pile of the stuff. Contractor Guy was very taken with the quality of the stuff he uses. Other firms deliver dirt that’s got clay and weeds in it, or so it would seem. But this stuff – ! To tell you the truth, Keyser had to admit the apparent virtue of this stuff. Dunno about the crappiness of other people’s dirt, but this top soil was sure impressive. No weeds, no lumps. And no clay!

Hosannah in the highest to the Lord of Top Soil! Or dumpsters, at any rate. This is late one Saturday night. Supposedly someone was to take the dumpster away by 8. 8 came and went, but at 8:30, lo and behold, a truck! It’s pretty cool how a driver who knows what he’s doing can manipulate a huge dumpster full of cement so easily. Oh, and that chair at the front of the walk holds the bin for the sissy mailman, who informed us back before the new front walk was laid that he absolute could not walk across dirty. He’s a complete pussy (if you’ll excuse the expression), whining about anything he can.

Mrs. S. was so delighted at this unexpected turn of events that she trotted out (in bare feet) to offer the driver a celebratory cookie. He in turn was delighted by this unexpected turn of events. We kept a constant supply of drinks and snacks available for the workers, and one night we even barbecued for some of the ones we knew best (that is, they were the only ones around that day). Apart from the fact that this seems only polite, it was remarked upon several times by them and Contractor Guy that they were working even harder than usual because we were so nice to them. This seems like only common sense. It doesn’t cost much to offer nice provisions, and it stands to reason that people will go the extra mile for you if you’re nice to them. Win-win! Virtue no doubt is its own reward, but it’s even better if it pays off!

As a bit of a break, here’s scene from Dominion Day (July 1). This shows how long the project’s been going on, since all the previous photos were earlier (i.e., still in June). This is a nice shot of plants in front of beautiful downtown Iglooville.

A little change of focus, and now you’ve got a clearer shot of BDTIV, with fuzzy green in the foreground.

A clean shot of downtown Iglooville. But enough of that!

Okay, okay. But here’s a nice image of a plant…

All right, one last interlude shot. This is the ex-Mrs. S.’s rescue greyhound. He was apparently named George W. Bush (or something like that), and he was no better at running after rabbits than his name sake was at running the US. Anyway, he likes whipped cream, as you can see. Note also the gay liveried collar. Hmmm.

The view out the front door. Finally! The dirty, er, top soil is spread out and ready for sod!

Back yard’s ready too. Here’s the fountain, now ready for action and enhanced with a bunch of plants around the edge. It’s already attracting attention from passer-by in the alley. Wait till there’s grass!

The number of workers would vary, and today’s a big day. Time to lay down sod! There were five pallets, with seven layers of ten rolls each. Didn’t seem like it would be enough at first. Would it?

Boy, it goes down quick once they get started! To the right, you can just see the new rock garden in front of the house. More of that expensive Montana stuff. Contractor Guy was very keen on it. Naturally, since it cost us more. But it has to be admitted that it’s better than the peculiarly named “rainbow” stuff (it’s sort of dreary). Unfortunately, the big pine and the angle (it mainly faces east) mean that the front garden doesn’t get much sun, and it mainly grows weeds (apart from the Devil’s walking sticks, which we kept). So a lot of rocks and a few bushes will stop the neighbors from saying, “What is the matter with those people?” whenever they cast a disparaging glance in our direction.

And it goes down out back too!

Here’s the view towards the front porch. At first, Contractor Guy talked us into a pillar for the address and the mailbox. Then he said it would look nicer to have a separate one on the right for the mailbox. A few grand here, a few grand there, and pretty soon you’re talking Geithner money! But it has to be said that the second pillar does look good. Wonder if we’re “too big to fail”?

Here’s the view out the back. Beginning to look as if the massive project had never taken place and it had always looked like this…

The mighty Manitoba maple shades the backyard most of the time, but now the evening sun is finally swinging around. The lawn is looking great. Just one yellowish patch in the middle. We spent a fortune dumping water on it, then it poured with rain for days. Better it should be on God’s water bill!

And here’s the vista out the front… Now all we need are railings (out back, that is).

Oh, so here’s the railing for the porch. At first, we had to wonder about whether to have railings at all. The panorama you had standing on the massive steps was great. You were high up on this massive pile of stone and had a splendid view all around. Pussy the Mailman came by one day and without so much as a “Gee, looks nice” complained that he wasn’t walking up without railings. As it turned out, that was the day the second pillar for the mailbox went up. But the ruminations about the railing were for naught. Here in Iglooville there’s a by-law about everything, so anything more than a foot tall (or something) has to have one. Mrs. S. was all vexed about this. Apart from anything else, railing is expensive. Still, it wound up looking pretty nice. The porch feels a bit less massive with the railing hemming you in, but it’s still much better than anything on the block. We used to take everyone’s property values down, and now those bastards are doing it to us. Have they no consideration for their neighbors! After all, it only took us twelve years, so now it’s their turn.

All that’s left (apart from tidying up) is the gates. Here’s the one in the front. As usual, nothing was easy. This was supposed to be four-feet wide, but last Friday Contractor Guy informs us that the four-footers are tall enough for Charles Foster Kane’s estate, so he’ll have to move the pillar, which will screw up the path from the front walk (which is aligned against the original placement of the pillar). We balk, but who knows what’ll have to be done? Long story short, eventually it’s decided to make a little pillar next to the house to accommodate the smaller gate without moving the main pillar. But the pillar in the back has to be raised to fit the railing, and so it has to be cemented together, and if that’s the case, maybe the one out the front should be too, blah blah blah. Nothing that more money borrowed from the line of credit can’t fix! Anyway, here’s the finished product. This gate (and the back one) was done today, and turned out to be Keyser’s birthday present. Thank God it’s done!

Here’s the backyard with the railing in place. We went out to get some Japanese lanterns for the water fall today, but all they had left were dinged ones. Probably have to wait till next year. But wait! Contractor Guy is told, and he can get us stuff at cost, blah blah blah. He can buy anything.

The same view, but slightly to the left. Now you can see nasty neighbor’s ugly white wall. Mrs. S. was all worried about it falling during the removal of the old retaining wall, but now it’s sturdy as can be. O ye of little faith! It’s horrible looking, but it won’t fall down.

The view to the right in the setting sun. We bought extra birthday cake at the store to share it with the guys in celebration of the completion of the great project. That way, we have lots of varieties to sample today, and can give away most of the leftovers to them, too. Anyway, there’s the pillar for the gate out by the garage.

Here are Clark, Contractor Guy and Alwyn, looking deservedly pleased with themselves. Job well done! Now maybe Keyser and Mrs. S. can get on with their lives. And loyal readers of the Lair don’t have to read about this crap again!

Now we have to have a block party to show off the results of this seemingly endless project. Then the neighbors can decide if putting up with all that horribly loud music that the workers insisted on listening to was worth it!