Vacumming....My Lawn

Every winter, we get A LOT of gravel plowed onto our lawn by the snow plows. And every year our lawn looks deader and deader. We have put our lawn on project mode and are following a plan that includes vacuuming out the gravel. Yes, I vacuumed my front lawn.

I tried this a few years ago with our indoor vac, but it didn't work so well. Then I borrowed my neighbor's Shop Vac, but the hose was too floppy and short of vacuuming on my hands and knees this did not work.

So this year I had a brilliant plan...DD3 would use the Shop Vac to vacuum the lawn. She was the perfect height after all. Well, you can guess how long that lasted for so this is how my "brilliant plan" played out... We sprinkled dried oatmeal all over the lawn. The oatmeal is light enough both in color and weight to stay on top of the lawn and make it possible for us to see where we had been and where we were going. DD3 thought this part was so fun!

I thought, "Of course DD3 will have such a good time vacuuming up the oatmeal." How many kids do I have again?! I should have known this would last for about 3 seconds - which it did.

So I'm left with a lawn COVERED in oatmeal, two babies that will need attention, and a Shop Vac with a floppy hose. I ran into the garage, looked around saying, "What can I use, what can I use?" and ended up with this...

A PVC pipe and painters tape. I lashed the hose to the pipe to make it stiff and the pipe was long enough that I could hold onto that and still stand up. Pretty cool huh? It still took a couple of hours, but my lawn was seriously thanking me afterward. And my neighbors got some good laughs too.

This was all the gravel I vacuumed up. So my less than brilliant plan actually ended up pretty well. All I have to say is our grass better look AWESOME this year. ;)