Just a little Dirt

The first killing freeze occurred on Friday night. I was devastated since my daffodil bulbs remain in the downstairs fridge awaiting a prepared flower bed for planting. All my prevous experience indicates the bulbs must be under nine inches of soil prior to the first freeze! Ol' Abner had promised to prepare a raised flower bed for me at each corner of the driveway. The ground here is very rocky. Digging with a trowel will give way to a tiny indentation about two inches deep before hitting a bit of solid rock. A pickaxe breaks one rock up only to unearth another. Clearly we need a load of topsoil to fill in the gaps where rocks are removed. Our neighbor, Digger Dude aka Ol' Excavator, lamented that he had no topsoil on hand and didn't expect to have any soon. Ol' Abner suggested we just go buy some bagged topsoil and save the trouble of having a truck haul it in. Measuring the flower bed areas, he estimated we would need about a cubic yard of topsoil. That's about one truck load, I think. When we priced the bags at the home improvement store, we concluded we were definitely in the wrong business. Dirt in a bag containing .75 cubic feet of topsoil looked tiny. Each small bag was priced at just under $2. Quickly doing the math, we decided having a truckload haul it in might not only be easier on the pocket, but definitely easier than loading and emptying sixty or so of the tiny but heavy parcels. Remembering another contractor with piles of dirt at his storage lot, we drove by and took down the number to call for topsoil delivery. That was four days ago...and the call has not yet been returned. It's deer season in dogpatch...bet the phone is turned off so his prey won't be spooked!