Teacher Grading of a Different Kind

While off from school for a few days, Shawn finished up his grading... grading around our house that is. He's been steadily adding dirt, which he bought off of craigslist, to all sides of our house at a sufficient slope. This will help water to drain away from the house and hopefully prevent any of it from reaching the basement. This was a recommendation by our inspector when we bought the house... a year and a half ago.

Wheel barrow by wheel barrow Shawn shoveled, distributing, unloaded, packed, shaped, watered, smoothed and packed some more, all the dirt he could until it was at a satisfactory angle against the house. On the east side and in the backyard, with help from neighbor Sara, he placed and secured a layer of black edging. He also inserted window wells around all the basement windows and placed a layer of river rock in them from neighbor Ole. Next, he laid a layer of newspapers over the dirt and finally, topped it all off with new mulch from Home Depot. 42 bags to be exact. The leftover dirt was distributed around the backyard into some of our nice holes and all the exposed dirt was sprinkled with grass seed and watered as generously as possible.

It was definitely a process and he was sure to vocalize his efforts to me as it was a lot of work for one person to do. As a thank you, I thought I'd display his marvelous work for everyone to see. It couldn't have turned out better and I'm forever grateful he took it upon himself to get it done while I was at work. I'm not so sure I would have been as ambitious with my time off of work.