Restoring Hope With Yard Work

When events in the larger world leave me feeling hopeless, frustrated, and angry, my antidote is to spend time outside or working on my ongoing house renovation project. It helps to do something positive and to remind myself that despite the discord and greed dominating American politics, there is still much good work happening in the world. 

Which is why I spent the weekend hauling and spreading 4.5 cubic yards of crushed gravel. The gift of gravel came courtesy of Jeff Durham, my contractor, who filled his dump trailer at the quarry, and left the trailer in my driveway late Friday afternoon. 

In case you can't envision what a cubic yard looks like, 4.5 cubic yards of crushed gravel filled the trailer in the photo above from from to back, and side to side. (I didn't think to shoot a photo until l had already hauled and spread about a third of that pyramidal pile.) 

Put another way, a cubic yard of crushed gravel weighs somewhere between 2,400 pounds (just over a ton) and almost a ton and a half. So it's no wonder that the tires of his double-axle dump trailer were riding a little low–it was laden with between 10,800 pounds (five tons) and 13,050 pounds (six and a half tons) of gravel! 

All that crushed rock was to complete a front-yard project that Jeff and I started last May when he rented a baby Bobcat (the heavy equipment, not the wildlife) so we could scrape turf from my lawn-bound front yard to create walking paths and a sitting patio. 

The baby Bobcat (aka walk-behind mini-bulldozer) after a long afternoon and evening of turf-scraping. 

After the turf-scraping, we got busy with other, more urgent renovation projects (installing a new electric service, building an en-suite bathroom in my master bedroom, re-doing the bedroom floor, blowing seventeen inches of insulation in the attic, beginning window replacement, and so on).

Which means that my dirt paths and patio stayed dirt through the summer and most of the fall. I did line them with bricks reclaimed from other projects around the house and yard. 

Last week brought a rare conjunction of good weather predicted for the weekend, dump trailer availability, and my time free of other tasks. So Jeff brought me gravel, and I spent two happy and completely exhausting days hauling and spreading it, shovel-full by shovel-full, wheelbarrow-load by wheelbarrow-load.

The first path partly graveled yesterday noon, a gorgeously sunny and warm late fall day. (Much too warm for December, in fact, but I was not complaining.)

I hauled and spread about 2/3 of the pile in the trailer yesterday. And then applied arnica ointment to my back and shoulders, and went to bed early, very pleased to finally be getting one of my long-delayed yard-renovation tasks completed. 

This morning when Jeff arrived to work on piecing the interior trim for my bank of three huge replacement windows in the living room, he was impressed at how much gravel I had moved. "Do you want me to haul some?" 

I shook my head as I shoveled gravel from the trailer to the wheelbarrow. "No thanks. Believe it or not, I enjoy this."

He shook his head with amusement and went back to work cutting trim. 

Getting to the end… 

By late this afternoon, as thick clouds rolled in and the air began to smell like snow, I had nearly emptied the trailer. Jeff hooked it to his truck, and with me guiding, backed it up and dumped the last half-cubic yard into the last area of bare dirt on the sitting patio by the front door. 

Then he headed off to work on his own living room, and I finished hauling and spreading. After which I admired the finished paths and sitting patio before stowing my wheelbarrow, scoop shovel, and rake in the garage, admiring my work once more, and then walking slowly inside to rest. 

The paths and sitting patio, graveled and ready for tonight's snowstorm. 

Outside, low clouds are scudding past, and I am sitting on the couch with my feet up in front of the fire, astonished that I moved that whole trailer-load of crushed gravel in the past two days. And in the doing, finished a front-yard project that has been nagging at me, and turned out just as well as I imagined it. 

My neighbors have already commented about how great the paths and patio look. They'll look even better next spring when the daffodils, pineleaf penstemon, blue sage, and others I've planted to replace the lawn grow and bloom. And the birds and butterflies and native bees discover them.

Thinking of that makes me smile, and restores my faith in the essential goodness of life. It only took hauling and spreading some 10,000 pounds of gravel to get there. It was well worth the aching muscles, believe me. 

Salvia pachyphylla, blue sage, a Great Basin native, and one of the plants that will brighten my front yard next year. 

Home: Restoring Hope Inside and Out


I am writing this post from the breakfast nook off the vintage kitchen of my new old house in Cody, in the northwest corner of Wyoming. Late-afternoon sun pours in through windows that are gray with at least a decade of grime, but no matter.


Through the door to the living/dining room I can see the shine return to the red-oak floors as they dry from their final coat of Bona Floor Rejuvenate. I have my feet up on one of only four chairs in my house, taking a break from the hard and long work of restoring this very neglected house. 


(Until the moving van arrives, my furniture consists of four vintage maple chairs and a matching table, all of which need refinishing; my Thermarest camping mattress and sleeping bag, which are surprisingly comfortable; plus a couple of packing boxes for side tables.)



My bedroom, in serious need of a new coat of paint and some furniture, but there’s art on the walls. (That’s a broadside by prinkmater Karla Elling of a quote from Terry Tempest Williams that begins, “I pray to the birds….”)


When I look over my shoulder at the kitchen, I can’t help but smile. The sunshine yellow steel cabinets, aqua wall oven and copper range hood, all circa 1956, the year the house was built and I was born, are gleaming again, thanks to Susie and Natalia, the cleaning elves who came to help me on Friday.



While I worked on hands and knees with a rag, paint scraper and bucket after bucket of Murphy oil soap and hot water, scrubbing years of grime and splatters off the floors, they carefully cleaned and buffed the kitchen, coaxing back its shine. And what a shine it has! I swear I can feel the house exhaling, happy to be tended again. 


I even scrubbed the tile floor in my new office, preparing it for the arrival of my file cabinets and boxes and boxes of books.



Out in the garage, my contractor, Jeff Durham, has worked magic with a structure that was only partly finished, and that badly. Jeff stripped crumbling drywall, replaced the non-fireproof door to the house, took out a dinosaur of an inoperable gas heater, and carefully rebuilt a cozy space for Red to live.



Red, snug in the garage this evening


Yesterday, I mopped the garage floor so there would be a clean place for the movers to put boxes and bins when the big truck arrives on Tuesday. Then I put the first coat of Bona on the floors, and while it was drying, I took a break and walked up the hill to the Post Office to collect my mail, and then back downtown to join the Cody Women’s Rally at City Park. 



Left to right: Spirit and Rattlesnake mountains and Red Butte, from my incredibly scenic walk to the Post Office. 


I wasn’t sure to expect at the Rally–Wyoming is a Republican state, and we just elected Liz Cheney (the not-good daughter of that Cheney) as our second US Senator. By the time I got to the park, a rowdy but good-natured crowd of over 450 people had gathered, young to old, many sporting pink pussy caps and carrying signs.



My favorite sign from the rally, both for the design and the message: “A woman’s place is in the resistance.” 


I stood in warm sunshine with friends Connie and Jay Moody while we listened to speakers reminding us of the value of women’s rights, immigrant rights, access to healthcare, and combating global climate change. Between cheering the speakers, Connie and Jay introduced me to their many friends.


My favorite part of the rally was a small moment, one that speaks volumes about the labels and stereotypes we allow to divide us. City Park is right in the center of Cody, fronting the main highway through town. As traffic passed, some drivers cheered the crowd, some yelled insults. I looked up as a semi hauling a load of logs thundered slowly along. 


The young male driver honked, pumped his fists, and then rolled down his window. I thought, “Uh oh!” Then he yelled, “I’m with you!” The crowd cheered. The driver honked his air horn again, a huge smile lighting his face, and drove on.  


On the political maps, Wyoming is marked as a Red State. That doesn’t mean that this is a bad place full of hateful people. Our world is more complicated than that. What really matters is not the labels or the divisive politics, it’s how we treat each other, the quality of the communities we grow, and how we work together in positive ways to nurture each other, our planet, and its web of lives.


This country is a democracy, not a monarchy. It is up to each of us to take part and set the tone for the America we believe in; the collective impact of our lives and actions is what makes this country great, not the loudest or most hateful voice. 


We can’t let the fear and bullying take away our power to do good and be compassionate every single day. We all need to stand up, raise our voices, and be involved in positive ways, wherever we are.


As the log-truck driver reminded me, it’s who we are inside that matters, not the labels and stereotypes we apply. There are good, caring, compassionate people everywhere. Let’s work together to be the America we all believe in. 



Blessings to you all from the blue-dusk sunset in my snowy Wyoming neighborhood.