Will The Mud Ever End?

So, I woke up this morning and laid in bed planning out my day in my mind. Construction on our fence is supposed to start on Thursday, so I had a few things I needed to get finished for that. I get dressed and head outside to dig part of the footing and:

"Surprise"!!!

There's a huge sink hole in the front of our house. I walk out of our garage and the first thing I see is one of our big landscaping rocks sitting on a 45-degree angle. I then notice that a bunch of my paving stones have disappeared along with one of our bushes. There's a huge hole right next to our sidewalk where our sprinkler system ties into our water main. I step out onto our lawn and it completely caves in. Holy crap...Or I said some other choice words along those lines.

So, I begin tearing our edging, raking back decorative rock, pulling up paving stones, etc. I finally get everything uncovered and what a mess. All the dirt has washed away and left this huge cavern under a big chunk of our lawn and flower bed. I mean BIG...I could stick my entire shovel down into it and still not reach the bottom.

I then start shoveling down to the water main. Luckily my father-in-law showed up about that time and we dug and dug. Shoveling dirt is one thing, but mud is a whole other fun ball game. My neighbor came over and helped. We finally reached the main and discovered that the pipe to our sprinkling system had slipped out of the elbow where it connects to the water main. I guess not enough glue was used or maybe the joint was a little dirty or something. Regardless, basically a 1" pipe was running full-bore for probably 12 hours.

So, we got it fixed. I then proceed to transplant the sod I tore out to our backyard, figuring that we might as well use it for something. My father-in-law then starts pounding away on our lawn with the bucket of his backhoe to cave in the sink hole.

And, that's where we sit tonight. The cavern has been caved in and the pipe is fixed. We've got to get more dirt to fill the hole back in. Then we'll compact it, put edging back in, rebuild flower beds, place decorative rock back in them, relay paving stones, and lay sod. Yee haw....

I can't tell you how good watering my lawn with a hose and sprinkler sounded today when I was staring into this abyss that used to be my front yard. We were finally just getting our front yard about where we wanted it...bushes were growing and I actually had to mow our lawn for the first time last week.

Oh well....guess it could have been worse.