I Killed the Stump, Stole Some Dirt, Then Dabbled in Sodding

This past weekend, I made major progress in our backyard. The last time I mentioned our tree stump, you saw it as a charred nub holding on to any last shred of dignity.

After hacking into it some on Saturday, I finished it off on Sunday. Here, what was left of the actual rooted part on Sunday, I have indicated with a fashionable pair of red glasses:
Everything else around it is parts that I chopped off. I found that by moving around the stump and chopping into it from all angles really helped bring it down quicker.

It is very hard to tell in this shot, but here is AFTER the stump was defeated:

I covered the hole back up as best I could, but realized I would need more dirt to level off the spot.


It is very helpful living just a few blocks from a huge park. Because. Uhm. I went there to steal dirt.
It's true. I literally threw our outdoor trash can in my backseat with a shovel and filled it about 3/4 with dirt, came home, and dumped it in the stump area.

Then I came up with the idea to dig up grass from the very back of our yard and use it as sod to cover the giant muddy patch. From the purple lines below, you can see where the stolen dirt is, and the orange denotes where I moved grass to the area:

Using a little gardening shovel, I was able to fairly successfully dig up chunks of grass and walk it over to the the middle of the yard.

Here you can see the transplanted grass. After plopping the patches right next to one another, I saturated the grass with my hose, in the hopes that would help the roots take hold to the dirt there:

I have left it like this for now, in case my sod idea doesn't work. This section of transplanted grass very well could just die, and I'd be pissed if I had ended up doing that entire patch, so I'll wait a few more weeks to see what happens with this little bit. If it looks like the grass will grow successfully there, I'll move more over to cover the entire bald spot.

Now, if St. Louis weather would just stop being a bitch and stay around 75 degrees for a while, I could really work some magic on my sad looking yard!