Dirt Happens

We've been up at the cottage the past couple of days, shoveling dirt around the bulkhead of our property there. So many storms over this past winter that some of the soil around the steel bulkhead just washed away. We've had an order in for replacement dirt... 8 yards of it, and the truck was finally able to deliver it on Thursday. They had a back-log of orders..... so many property owners up there needed countless yards of soil to use as filler around their bulkheads.

So up we went, knowing that a wheelbarrow and two shovels were waiting for us in the garage at Mayberry. Oh goodie. Young Miss C wanted to come and help us... she thought it would be a lot of fun. No way, of course, were we going to let her miss school to shovel dirt. But we did try and take her attitude with us to the lake.... this was going to be fun. Fun!

I started counting the wheelbarrow-loads, thinking I could tell Miss C how many times we went back and forth with all that soil. I stopped counting at the third one. By the time we had filled up the wheelbarrow with dirt for the third time, it was no longer fun. Far from it. Into the dirt went the shovel, into the wheelbarrow went that dirt. When we moved the wheelbarrow to the bulkhead, into the dirt went the shovel, and onto the property went the dirt. So much fun that we could hardly stand it.

By the morning of the second day of shoveling, I called the man who takes care of our lawn up there. I told him that the dirt had been delivered, and asked if he would like to come help. Nice guy... he was there within half an hour-- with a large wagon that hooked up to his riding mower. That green wagon held about three wheelbarrows' worth of soil. Much less work, plus there were three of us working instead of two. (Actually, I should say there were two and a half of us working, instead of one and a half. In all reality, I could only shovel half as much as my husband and the lawn guy.) I told my husband that the next time he buys me a shovel, it had better be plastic, not wood and metal.

All the soil was replaced and packed down by Friday afternoon. We even had a small pile of dirt left over, and the lawn guy said it could be shoveled into the flowerbeds or just piled up in a corner of the property somewhere, ready when we needed it. We were happy with the work we had done...... more work than we thought it would be, but it was done and we were pleased.

And then it started to rain on Friday night. Then the wind started. The waves kicked up... some of them coming up over one side of the bulkhead. Whitecaps were in the lake for as far as we could see.... wave after wave hitting the bulkhead... and taking away some of our dirt. The new dirt we had just shoveled there at the edge of our property. It was not a nice thing to see.

I told my husband that there has to be a better way. We can't be replacing dirt around the bulkhead every Spring..... maybe we could use boulders... make a rock-fence around the edge of the property. Or do what our neighbors did, and have a concrete walkway poured around the entire edge of the property's peninsula. He's thinking about it.

We were going to stay at the lake until tomorrow, but decided to come home a day early. No sense in staying up there and watching the lake steal away our hard-shoveled dirt.