Can you dig it?  Part 1

June 24 -- I came home to find the back fence gone, but that was about it.  Then I talked to the contractor by phone who explained that the excavation equipment might arrive before dark or first thing tomorrow morning.

Before I knew it, I heard a pretty loud noise and this is what I saw coming through the side yard (by the south side of the house),

then approaching the back of the house, and

squeezing in between the house and the garage to  

finally settle in for the backyard.

The backhoe operator, who also spoke to me in perfect French (he was showing off just a bit), was friendly and very delightful.  Before I knew it he was off to bring back another piece of equipment.

Here is the Bobcat that will scoop up the dirt and will take it to a dump truck to haul away.  As you can see in the photo above (which I took from the upstairs bedroom to get a bird's eye view), there are power and phone lines in a tangled web that will need to be raised so that the boom on the backhoe doesn't hit these lines when the digging starts bright and early tomorrow morning.