Leveling the Grass

When we first moved to Hawaii we ripped out all of the grass in our front and back yards. The grass was rooted poorly, needed replacement, and a sprinkler system needed installation. We hired a sprinkler man that is also a FEMA contractor, in the summer of 2005. K. only works with FEMA when a natural disaster occurs. K. earns what some people make in a year in just a few months when working with a natural disaster. K. has to be available at any time to fly any place in the country, all year. The rest of the time K. works doing lawn care in Hawaii. He installed our sprinkler system and arranged for fill dirt to be dropped in our front and back yards, so that when the grass was installed it would be perfectly level. The ground was beautifully flat in the front and back yards after the top soil dumps and K.'s hard work to level all of it. K. just had one more day of work to complete the sprinkler hook up in the back yard when Hurricane Katrina hit and K. was called to the mainland immediately. He imagined he might be flown back in a week or two for a weekend to see his family. We waited nearly six weeks without his return and decided to hire someone else to finish the sprinklers. K. refunded us part of our money. We hired a company to hydroseed the front and back yards some weeks back. Grass seed with some muscle man grass steroids was going to be sprayed in two days. (Most people either use hydroseed or use grass plugs because sod is SO expensive in Hawaii! Three years ago it was $5 a square foot and didn't include labor costs!) I called three companies for three estimates to finish our sprinklers in the next two days. Each company came out and told me the same thing. I had 3/4 inch pipe laid in my yard, and they could not guarantee their work unless I replaced all of the piping with 1 inch pipe, since that is what their company used. We settled on who to hire, and they ripped up our perfectly flat back yard, dug trenches, and replaced the piping the day before the hydroseed folks showed up. We had waited weeks for the hydroseed company to give us an appointment since they are the only company on the island. Needless to say, when they sprayed our lawn with seed it wasn't flat. We knew we could level the yard with sand. A little over a year later when the grass was strong and healthy, we attempted to level our yard with sand. We had one little problem.It was hard to explain to our then 2 year old that YES you can play with sand at the beach, but NO you may not play with sand when it is in our back yard. He insisted that the sand was for his trucks. In a flash he would be outside in the sand with his trucks. Try as we might it was a huge battle to keep him and his trucks out of the sand. It is amazing how quickly one two year old can unlevel sand.

A year later, we are back at leveling the yard again with sand. Son1 is proving to be more helpful. He helped lay the sand, rake it into place, and finally water the sandy areas.
He did try to pull his trucks into the sand once. One reminder and he hasn't tried any more.