- 5 yards of dirt. About as tall as an average shovel.
Well, it’s official. I have officially bestowed upon my husband a greater volume, by weight, of birthdaygift than all other birthday gifts from all other friends and family combined for his life to this point. Let me explain.
Jonathan has finished digging and installing a series of french drains in our yard to try to alleviate a standing water problem from certain low areas, including a spot in our crawl space. Having been successful with the drains, he asked me to order five yards of fill dirt from a local landscaping company to cover the drain lines and to fill the low spot in the crawl space. He asked for this as his birthday present.
I had a coupon for 5 yards of topsoil from this company, and I saw that an order of fill dirt was $75 cheaper than the coupon amount for topsoil. Suspicious that I would be getting less dirt, I called the company to have them convert yards (the topsoil was measured in yards) to tons (the fill dirt was measured in tons). The guy on the phone said “Oh, one point blah, blah, blah.” and the words tons and yards were in there, but all I heard was the “one point” which told me that they were close enough that the fill dirt wouldn’t be less than the five yards. So rather than just asking how much 5 yards of fill dirt would be (which is what Jonathan asked for) I just ordered the number of tons of fill dirt on the back of my flyer.
20 tons.
Of fill dirt.
In my driveway for Jonathan’s birthday.
- 20 tons of dirt.
He worked all Saturday afternoon, with a little “help” from the mackerdoodle and managed to make quite a dent. He has enough to fill in some low spots in our yard and do some other fill work that he wanted to do. The problem of course is that he has to MOVE the 20 tons of dirt, with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. He has to move a large portion of it into our crawl space, which isn’t exactly easy work, either.
So that’s how much I love my husband.
I bury him in work for his birthday. Almost literally. All because I didn’t want to do the math to calculate that 20 tons of fill dirt was three times what my husband requested.
April 21st, 2009 at 10:19 am
Oh my goodness! I know I would have done the same thing 🙂 And for reasons like this, Loran wants a ‘bobcat with tracks’ as soon as we get to Wisconsin.
April 21st, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Hahahahahha!!! I can just imagine! LOL!
April 21st, 2009 at 9:58 pm
This is from Rob: Dear Coralie, Five tons translates into 13 yards, two and 1/2 times extra birthday wishes. I wonder if Jonathan will be thanking you for his birthday present when he’s at the chiropractor spending more money. P.S. My birthday gift to Jonathan is belated, sitting on my dresser. He can wear it while shoveling the remainder of the 20 tons.
This is from Sherri: Dear Coralie, You ROCK!!! If 5 yards is good, 20 tons is better!!!
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:14 am
From the picture it looks like you got decent fill in that lot. However, over here if you took fill instead of top soil you would also be getting lots of rubbish with it. Including broken bricks and roots. Tell Jonathan that horse linament works well on people too. He’ll probably need it.
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Jonathan looks as though he scaled Mount Cowan very successfully. When I first started reading I thought that is a nice pile of dirt then got to the other picture and thought was this taken from a different angle? Now it sure looks like a lot of dirt. So of course went back and realized two different piles of dirt. I would have done something like that. Tons, yards, truck loads – who knows? Happy digging Jonathan.
Love Auntie Wendy