We just finished leveling out our backyard in our current home. It’s taken months with a shovel and lots of arm and back power, and I’m exhausted. I’m hoping to make my yard pretty and functional for someone new, perhaps a new young couple excited to have a space larger than a multi-unit apartment can give them.

We put down some pretty mulch (to the tune of 4 cubic yards, so something like hundreds of pounds) and we staked in a little pathway from the front of the house leading down the side yard and to the back. The next project, the almost final step will be to order about 2 tons of gravel and shovel it one pail at a time into the ground and then pound it level.

Why not hire people? Because no one wants to work on this project where I live. I’m beyond words for how eager I am to pay someone a really good hourly wage to do this labor instead of me and my husband on the weekends, but it’s just the reality right now with Covid and what contractors say is a booming construction period in the Bay Area which allows them to pick and choose jobs. Those who are available are only open in a “few weeks” which is just not going to work because I have to juggle two mortgages right now.

Anyway, we’re in the last stretch now.