Sunshine and Blue skies?

After putting Mike on the bus yesterday morning I went to work in good ol' down town Brighton. I'm sure some of you remember the work the did just of main street last year, it was Madison between Third Street and Seventh Street. Including the sides roads. From what I've been told they put in new water and sewer lines.

Well, my uncle Tim is the one that did the restoration after the work was done. Trying to put things back into order after the chaos of construction. They where called in to do 3,000 square yards of work. But when they got there the found out that in reality it was 30,000. 3,00 isn't a big deal, that's two days of spreading dirt with the tractor and another day of raking and laying blankets. 30,000 is a months worth of work, Tim's tractor on has a 1/4 yard bucket. So, in order to spread 30,000 yards of dirt he would have to make 120,000 trips to the dirt pile. A deal was worked out with the prime of the job for the use of a loader, and the job was finished.

After that he got called back out 4 times last year by the city of Brighton because they 'where not happy' with the job. Evidently what they really wanted done was sod, not seed. Because exactly 1 month after completion they where calling him to come back because there was no grass.

At any rate, I was out there Monday to do some touch up. They where bitching about the way it looked, because all the grass wasn't grown in yet. Some spots where growing in nice, others looked like crap. When you stood out there you could tell the spots that looked like crap where the ones that the home owners pulled up the mulch blankets.

Now, for those of you that don't know a mulch blanket is just a cloth mesh with straw woven into it. It's is more sturdy then just putting straw down, but like straw there is no need to clean it up. Once it's down the grass will grow through it, and it will rot away. Pulling it up hinders the growth of the grass.

At any rate the inspector was out there telling us what he wanted done, and the guy from the company we where working for was also out there telling him no. What they wanted was sod, but where to cheap to pay for it. So we spent the day putting top soil by the curbs to make it look like we did work. We'll be back out there as soon as the rain stops to finish up what we started, and put down more grass seed.