Yardwork

I was uneasy when the guys from Comcast showed up.
Suddenly there were guys in hardhats tromping through our yard and leaving little red flags and strips of paint behind them everywhere: in the front yard, in the back yard and up and down the sides.
My neighbors were unhappy too. These people seemed to think they could just come in and make a mess.
I took pictures when they came back with heavy machinery although they looked at me suspiciously.
I put on a brave face and asked the guys about my husband's hard-laid sprinkler pipe.
"What if you break our pipe?" I said.

The hole where lawn used to be

"Then we fix! We fix!" They assured me as they drove a kind of bulldozer thingy right over the lawn and parked it on the side strip.
They worked and worked and now, months later, we find they crushed a sprinkler pipe. We couldn't check earlier because it's down in the ground and until the city turned on the gray water, we didn't know it was cracked.
It's not a simple repair because the Comcast pipe which is larger and heavier is laying right on top of our smaller, weaker pipe. You can't get at it without digging out way back and under the sidewalk.
Marc complained. He called the number the digger guys had left us and told them they needed to hustle out here.
Three weeks later, "Roberto" comes out. He leans over to take a peek and clucks, shaking his head.
"Si! You have broken pipe."
Marc nodded, pleased to be validated, waiting for the rest.
"I cannot fix," Roberto said. "I only fix the little orange pipes, not the big, white pipes."
So Marc went back to the phone to the same number, the same salesperson, and essentially started back at square one. "No, we don't want your service. We want our pipe fixed."
The salesguy promised to have someone call us and no one has yet to do that.
So we can't turn the water on over there. We just have this big hole and exposed pipe.
Marc could fix it but he's busy and it makes him angry to have to clean up after these people.
I don't have the pictures I took anymore for a court case.

The crack in the white pipe

The lawn is brown and dying. It's sad and ugly.
The only silver lining is, the crabgrass that's plagued us for years in that area is dying too.