Start with one backyard that has been baking under black plastic for 11 weeks.

Add 1 big truck that may or may not fit in your driveway after moving your own cars and your neighbors deciding they should move their cars too.

Add 1 cu yd of seed cover, still steaming!

Add 7 cu yd of soil/compost mix.

I said SEVEN.

Boggle at how you and one other person are going to move that huge frakkin’ pile o’ dirt onto your lawn. Get out the shovels. Discover just how bad it is to be so sedentary. Trade off shovelling with husband who is shovelling and dumping the wheelbarrow.

Enjoy the drink of the day, plenty of water with some cranberry juice to give it some flavor. Oh yeah, it’s only 9 am, and it’s 97F degrees in the shade. Drink more water.

Decide you can’t shovel anymore and start moving bags of bark mulch to their intended positions around the perimeter. Get bark mulch crumbs all over you, including in your bra! Stop working at noon, because you both are completely exhausted and it’s over 100F.

Get up at 7 am the next day and open up those bags of bark mulch. Finish the pile, which is even harder now because you burned all your muscles yesterday lifting shovels-full of heavy dirt. Stop at 10 am when the temp is in the high 90Fs.

Look at what you still have ahead of you, and decide to wait until the backyard is in shade before breaking down the wheelbarrow piles. Work until 10 pm, in the dark to keep the bugs from being attracted to the light. Spread out all the piles and try to make a flat lawn. Decide to be McGuyver and lay several cinder blocks on a tarp and drag them all around to compress the soil. Give up and collapse exhausted into bed and set the alarm for 6am, when Home Depot opens.

Arrive at 7 am at Home Depot to rent one of those thingies that you fill with water and roll over the soil to compact it. Attempt to install borders around the bark mulch edging, give up in frustration at the soil you started with which is like concrete. Spread fertilizer and seed. Cover with seed cover, using your expensive Tupperware Mix n’ Stor and 1 gal Pitcher to scoop out the steaming pile and shake it onto the ground. Get dizzy and stop sweating even though you feel like your face is on fire, while your husband continues to cover the seed and then rolls over it with the Home Depot thingy. Go inside and sit down and drink, drink, drink more water to see if you can get your body to sweat or pee or something. Forget to take pictures on the third day until it’s all over. Finally start sweating again, just as your husband is finishing up and is ready to collapse himself. Admire the hard work you have done, and hope that some grass will actually sprout instead of dying in the heat. Turn on the sprinkler.