It’s hard to believe but the saga of our backyard is nearing its conclusion. Today the contractor (a fab guy: if you are in the South Bay area and need a good outdoor patio done, we have a recommendation for you) poured the concrete in the back and side yards. Considering how long the whole place has been The Big Dirt Pile, it took no time at all to pour – about an hour from start to finish. It’s been a tough row to hoe but I can now say that I finally see light at the end of the tunnel (give me a minute and I’ll come up with some more metaphors for that sentence). The next steps are to lay the tile and plant some grass and plants in the side yard, and put the orange trees in their respective new homes in the back. Yay!!!!

Along the way as we excavated the back, we found an assortment of really odd things. That’s what comes of living on a property that dates back to 1918, I guess. Among the treasures we have dig up:

*one horseshoe, very rusted and obviously pretty old
*bricks in varying degrees of decay – enough to make us think there was some sort of structure back there once upon a time
*chunks of asphalt – no idea there, except maybe there was a driveway or path back there once that led to the structure mentioned above (but in that case you’d expect to see more than we found)
*tree roots! lots and lots of tree roots – no surprise there, between the fir tree and rubber tree that were recently cut down

Which leads me to think that if we kept digging we might eventually find remains of Neanderthals or even the odd long departed union boss.

Pics of The Great Pouring are here.

I just realized that I failed to blog about the initial leveling and prep work that went into the yard before the cement could be poured (I was distracted by all of the other goings on of the past few weeks, no doubt). The photos of the prep work are here.