Topsoil, Lovely Clay-free Topsoil

Yesterday we had dry weather, so Dad was able to get a LOT more work done on our lawn-creation project. He brought in 5 loads of topsoil to dress the ground right around the house. This brought the level of the soil up to just a few inches below the top of the porch slab, and then he smootly graded it into a gentle slope back away from the house. It looks amazing.
He also topped the driveway and parking area off with a load and a half of crushed gravel, which is just super. We need to do a fair bit of hand raking still but then we'll be ready to seed the grass, at least in the area right around the house. We also need to get some stepping stones or something to make a path from the driveway to the house.
I can't get over how much better it looks with the lower, rough part of the slab covered up by the soil! This is how it was intended to be, but I just kind of got used to seeing the rough edge, not to mention parts of the gutter drain system. Of course, we still need to clean up the porch to really see how nice the house can look, but we'll get to that... someday.
In the back of the house is where most of the hand raking needs to be done, as dad couldn't work too close to the septic, and the sun-eves made it tough to get too close to the foundation. I'm pretty motivated to get out there with the rake though and then to get the grass seed down asap!
Back away from the house, the larger part of the eventual lawn area still needs to be worked over, so we'll have another work weekend soon. All that area, although it is large, will be much easier to work with, because there's no house or other structure that has to be carefully worked around.

Thanks so much Dad, Dave, Jack & Cary... I'm really pleased with what we acomplished this weekend, despite the heaviest rain we've had in 4 weeks on Sunday. I'm just so ecxited - we're going to have a lawn! There's no burn pile! Yay!