The lit of landscaping

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and the dead tree no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water.  T.S. Eliot “The Waste Land”

It was fuckin hot.    The idea must have been real nice looking on paper, or in someone’s white picket fence dream.  A couple of homes off a quiet country road, a little bit of land for the kids to run around.  A basketball hoop in the driveway and a nearby patch of woods to explore.  Except for the fuckin fact that latest job was on top of a hill, treeless and steep.  Somebody screws up a jump shot and their basketball would have enough momentum rolling down the driveway to go right through the damn windshield on a passing car.  Backing the dump truck plus the trailer up a hill was a bitch and a half.  Lack of trees plus the height of the hill meant that the wind would whip across the house in the winter, and absolutely howl through any little cracks in a window frame.  Except it was August, plenty of sun, and no wind or shade to cool you down in the slightest.  So hot the sweat would drip off your balls.  You could follow the new paver walkway around the side of the house, to the big patio with a nice seating wall running around the edge. The wall was almost at finish height, with little piles of broken or cut block strewn haphazardly between the pallets of new material.  If there was a plus to this damn weather, you could drive the dump onto the lawn to carry stone or block in, and you wouldn’t rut up the grass at all.  The only relief was lunchtime, sitting in the shade of the covered porch in front of the house, in the cool, 90 degree air.  Other than that, all you had was the fuzzy reception of the radio and handprints, defined in sweat on the wall as it grew higher one course at a time.  Another day of standing in the fuckin blast furnace of this backyard would hopefully finish the job.  Ball drippin weather.