We've finished tearing up all the grass from the yard!

Thanks to two rototillers and the aching backs and sore arms of The Yardeners, all the grass has been piled behind our composter--never again to be seen inside the four walls of the garden. Bubba and Krizby broke ground last Saturday afternoon with a heavy-duty rototiller they rented from Home Depot. As Bubba struggled with the crazy beast that is the Home Depot rototiller, Krizby, The Pooh, Rourous, Jerry, and Coy (yeah!) picked up the cut up grass.

A word to the wise, and according to an ancient African Proverb: "It takes more than one pass to get up all that nasty grass!"

Also, let me just say, you never can tell what the deal is with dandelions. Even though we've taken up all them from the yard, we have for sure not seen the last of them. There have been a couple spurt out of the ground overnight! Whoa!

Here are some photos of our progress.

The beginning of it all. Bubba descends the stairs to help Krizby remove all the rototilled grass. He looks upon the destruction he has wrought with smug confidence. That's one strike against the encroaching dandelions.

Let me give you some pointers on using a rototiller. The way to control the speed of this beast is not to pull backwards against the forward push of the blades. That will only tire you out. Rather, push DOWN on the handle. Dig those blades into the soil. That will both slow it down and get more of that gross grass up.

This took me until about half-an-hour into it to realize.

Check out Coy and his 12-pronged rake skills! That man is crazy! This process took a loooooong time to finish. I mean, we wanted to be sure that we wouldn't be growing grass in the garden.

As we de-grassed the garden, Coy told us stories to pass the time. This was one story that Coy told: "There once was a little monster named Jimmy. everyone liked him so much that they told him to travel up this huuuuuge mountain to rescue the anonymous Cake Duffins who were trapped there. But Jimmy didn't like Cake Duffins so he decided to travel the seven seas instead but only ended up taking a bath. And this was exactly what his mom wanted him to do all week. The End"

The moral of the story is: "aim high and you will only do what you are supposed to do."

Face and Didi joined us after they got off work! Here is Face filling up the red wheelbarrow with sod.

Since they were the originators of this Wonderful Garden Idea, we received much wisdom from them on how best to de-grass a garden. We got it finished in no time.

So much depends on this red wheelbarrow. The Yardeners are very glad we have its services. Now if only we had some white chickens.