do-over

Dean's been in the trenches off and on building the forms for the garage footings.
I say 'off and on' because there have been several distractions.

He made pretty good progress on those forms until he got to the south-west corner

where he discovered the soil to be particularly loose. 

That's bad - very bad - for footings. 

You see...our excavator did more than yank up the old driveway and garage floor,
dig down for our footings and help us get connected to city water;
he also pulled out the ginormous stump of that nasty

 Ailanthus.

That tree's nick-name, by the way, is "Tree of Heaven".
Based on it's long list of
poor qualities, being known as an invasive species,
having cost us plenty of green and otherwise given us h%#&, 

I'm convinced "Tree of Heaven" is more than just a misnomer -- it's a bad joke.

That uprooted tree from you know where was the reason for the
deep, loose soil in the south-west corner.

What to do, what to do?
DIG DEEPER.
That's what ya do.

Mr Mossi got back in the trenches, broke down those beautiful forms, chalked it up to a learning experience, and called our neighbor and fellow ward member Allen Christensen.
Allen, more than happy to oblige,
showed up early this morning with his backhoe and cheerfully went to right to work.

As I was walking out to my car to leave for school, he turned off his backhoe
 and said "Good Morning". I thanked him for helping us out on short notice.
His reply was, "Awe. This isn't work. This is PLAY."
Now, thanks to this kind man and his willingness to
come "play" on our house project,
Mr Mossi can start the footing forms do-over and we'll be good to go.
We are so thankful for wonderful, generous folks like Allen.
I can hardly wait to order concrete!