Mound O' Dirt

This is our mound of dirt.  Or I should say was our mound of dirt.

Do you remember it?  It was here at Mom's retirement.

When we were digging up our side yard to make the garden earlier this summer I used it as an incubator for the good grass we dug up.  I later transplanted the grass to other parts of the yard that needed it.  The mound is now growing weeds.  What's weird is that no matter how much dirt and rocks we piled on daffodils still grew in the thing. 

The reason we piled all the reject dirt from our yard here is because of this tree.  Dad HATES this tree.  He wants to kill it which is why he's piling rocks and dirt on top of its roots to compress them and make the tree die, then it wouldn't be his "fault" i.e. the homeowners association can't put up a fuss when he wants to get rid of the tree.  "Look the thing is diseased and a hazard.  We need to chop it down."  Oooooh daddy.  Anyway, see the side that sheared off?  That branch fell on top of Uncle Scott's car during Mom's retirement party.  These trees (Bradford Pear trees.  The ones that have white flowers in the spring that smell like dog poop?  Yeah those) are weeds.  They grow everywhere and they are really weak (because they're weeds).  If you ever see footage of storm damage and there are trees down it's normally a Bradford Pear.
Ok end of mini lecture, but if you ever willing plant a Bradford Pear in your yard after reading this your house is dead to me.

This is the composition of the mound of dirt.  It's not even really dirt, it's just clay and rocks.

We dug this clay rock mixture out from this strip by the road.

And this strip by the road.  We wanted things to actually GROW, and they won't grow in rocks.  So we dug down three feet and removed a lot of rocks.

And when I say a lot of rocks I mean a LOT of rocks.  Every single one of these rocks came from those two strips of dirt between the sidewalk and the road.

And all these massive rocks too.  It was tough going to get all these out.  (I will say that I dug up the biggest rock.  And yes I am keeping track).

As an understatement, the pile of dirt was an eye-sore.  So we got a landscaper to give us an estimate on how much it would be to remove the dirt.  His estimate $475!  I thought surely we could do it for less.  So dad drove to Manassas (battle of, yes you remembered that correctly from history class) and rented a Uhaul.

And we started filling that thing.

We would shovel the dirt in and then rake it flat.  It took a long time and it was hot.  (funny story, when we drove to the dump to unload the truck I was shoveling and found a frog!  Somehow we had shoveled him into the back of the truck with the dirt and he'd ridden with the dirt to the dump and we only found him when we were shoveling the dirt out!  That was one hard-core frog!  I let him go in the trees, no worries).

Then we drove it to the dump, where it cost $120 to unload!!!  I first of all didn't know you had to pay to dump things, second of all I was planning it to cost more like $60.  Anyway, we then had to unload everything we had loaded in, then drive home aaaaaand . . .

Do it all again.  It took two loads to the dump so between the car rental and the two dump loads getting rid of the dirt ourselves cost around $280.  So we saved close to $200 which is nothing to sneeze at but it might be worth it next time to make someone else do the hard labor.

This is what I looked like after all was said and done.  Lovely.  But at least the pile of dirt is gone and hopefully the tree will be gone soon too.