Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Fitzcarraldo

This man is my neighbor (and an extremely nice fellow):


Also, he is Fitcarraldo. At least, he's the Fitzcarraldo I remembered from Warner Herzog's film, even though I was remembering it wrong. In my memory, the rubber baron is trying to haul the giant steamship over the mountains to build an opera house in the jungle.

Wrong. Vaguely similar, but incorrect. However, please remember the image of this incorrect Fitzcarraldo as we continue.

When my neighbor started living in his house, the front yard was xeriscaped, and not well. He decided that he would replace the crappy xeriscaping with an actual lawn.

That was over three months ago. The picture was taken yesterday.

He quickly found out that when you dig down more than a couple of inches, you're hitting rock. So the rock had to be dug out (that's the mountain of soil in the picture). Then the yard had to be aerated several times. Then everything had to be leveled before new soil was spread on top. Somewhere in there, a sprinkler system was installed.

Then he decided to do the back yard at the same time. Which, incredibly was in worse shape than the front yard. Oh, and he needed a new fence.

He purchased two pallets of grass (you can see it in the picture), which has now essentially died because all the prep work took so much time.

I think it might have been easier to haul the steamship over the mountain.

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