Day: November 4, 2017

Three sentence movie reviews: Hell or High Water

When one spends several hours doing hard labor in service of a landscaping project, one does not have the gumption to do much else.  So it was that this film got a re-watch, and I enjoyed it just as much as the first time.  The casual “funny” racism of Jeff Bridges character still irked, but I still loved the layers of this story and how well it is told.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home with Matt, who really enjoyed it.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2016/hell_or_high_water_ver2.html
Fun fact:  Comancheria was the original title of this film. It seems that it worked better for the French people than the idiom Hell or High Water.

Side Yard Update

As the side yard project continues, the back yard becomes increasingly shabby-looking.  This will perhaps increase the motivation to complete the back yard (scheduled for April-June 2018) in a timely fashion.

We excavated four inches of dirt.  This became a dirt pile in the back of the back yard, though I did give away some to a neighbor on Next Door.  Excavating falls firmly into the manual labor category.  I found that I was quite efficient at the process, thanks to my years of double digging. When we were done:  a mostly even slick of muddy ground.

Here’s the view from the sidewalk.  It was exciting to finish the digging part of the project. But that lead to….

Four cubic yards of quarter-minus crushed rock, and 3.5 cubic yards of sand.  Our neighbor Leo was kind enough to let them deliver to his driveway, as we have none. This also meant we needed to move all this stuff in one weekend.

We got the crushed rock spread and found we had this much left.  I put it up as free on Craigslist, had someone contact me within 30 minutes and then she showed up at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning to take it away.  She was quick.  That just left 3.5 cubic yards of sand to move.

We put down landscape cloth and piled it into the side yard.  It was a lot of work.  Next up will be putting the sand in a layer, not a pile, and putting pavers into place.