Saving Dirt

My daughter Catherine and son-in-law Drew recently moved from their townhouse to a new home.  This necessitated moving all the garden soil from their second-story balcony.  Let me say, this was a lot of garden soil.  I'm not talking just a few terracotta pots.  They'd installed raised beds.  They were growing corn.  This is not an exaggeration.  Suffice to say, this was a lot of soil.  After some discussion, we hit on a likely-seeming plan.  We would lower the dirt in buckets on a rope to someone below who would upend the buckets into waiting trashcans so the dirt could be transported to the new house.

Artist's Re-Creation

I shoveled dirt into the buckets and lowered these over the balcony rail down to Catherine who filled a trashcan as full as the two of us would be able to lift.  When that trashcan was full, we started a second one, and when both were full, we wheeled them on a hand-truck down to Nancy's Rav4, and loaded it up.  It took three trips, two trashcans of dirt per trip, to get it all.  My back is still stiff as I write this.

Then Drew and I came back the next day, knocking apart the raised beds with a hammer and dropping the two-by-eights over the side, followed by the empty buckets, and a few other odds and ends we had up there.  Then Drew swept off the balcony and hosed it down.

Now here's the thing.  Drew and Catherine found nothing odd or untoward about lowering bucketfuls of dirt from a second-story townhouse balcony and transporting them to a different location.  They saw nothing odd  or untoward about building three long rectangular raised beds on a second-story townhouse balcony in the first place, and planting them with corn.  Obviously they are crazy.  Both of them.  Mad as hatters.  Out of their minds.  Insane.  I am so pleased.  Clearly they belong in this family.