Rockin' and Rollin'

Saturday was a day of tree cutting, raking and burning.  (I'll have more photos of that later.)

Sunday was a clean-up day. It didn't start that way, but it turned into that. Around the yard we have unfinished things and things we don't know how we want to finish and things we don't know what to do with and remainders of things. That happens with ongoing projects.

We used to have a log pile by the upper patio. We burned up all of the logs, moved the metal log rack up to the patio, and filled it full of outside wood. Yet, the stones from the old  pile remained. 

I have some plants coming up near the path to the shed. They blend in and I didn't want them to be stepped on if you're cutting the corner to go up to the shed.  So I put little sticks around them as a barrier.  It helped, but still blended in. There is also a hole in the ground where I removed a lily plant last year. The hole was never filled in and was an ankle twister in the dark. 

Yup, done it myself several times.  Still never fixed the hole. 

 
So Walt Kowalski and I started thinking, instead of filling in the hole, why not dig it out some more and move these rocks over here.

 
It would create more wall, protect the flowers, and use the rocks from the wood pile.

 
I had to dig out more than a bit, but it finished the wall nicely.  AND we cleaned up some random rocks.

 

Saturday while I was burning, I was also raking leaves and sticks out of the lower garden.  I moved most of the hostas out of this garden two years ago, but it is still full of Lily of the Valley.  Once that starts to come up, you can't even step foot in the garden without stepping on a flower. 

 

This garden was also full of large rocks. 30 years ago it looked nice, but now it is overgrown.  Our long term goal was to remove the large rocks and transplant the flowers.  Long. Term. Goal.

 

I forgot that part. 

 

As I was raking, I started removing the rocks.  It was easier to rake without the rocks in the way. The first few weren't as large as I thought.  I could remove them by hand without even a shovel to lift them. Walt Kowalski was carrying them up the hill to the shed.  He was using them to create a "patio" stepping area at the shed entrance to reduce the mud. 

 

This will be easy after all! (How many times have I said this?)

 

Ha!

 

What I couldn't see was that the pachysandra had grown over and was covering the especially large rocks. 

 

No, these can't even be called rocks.  These are boulders.  They are foundation stones used for building a foundation for a house. 

 

It took a shovel AND Walt Kowalski and I to release them from the ground.   Instead of carrying them, we put them in the wheelbarrow to take them to the top of the hill.  (Why didn't we want them at the bottom of the hill?!?)

 

After the first trip up with the wheelbarrow, Walt Kowalski returned covered in sweat and out of breath.  This method was not going to work. The rocks were getting heavier and the hill was getting steeper.

 

We needed a better method.  Let's try the refrigerator cart.  Walt Kowalski pulled.  I pushed.  Walt Kowalski pulled.  I pushed.  Walt Kowalski pulled.  I pushed.  20 trips later we got all of the rocks up the hill. 

 

On the first trip up the hill, I said "You know, that rock is a good height for me to step on then step in the shed."

 

Instead of a patio area, we created steps! Now I can easily step into the shed. It was a big step up for Walt Kowalski, too. We were planning to buy wooden steps from the home improvement store, but had just never got around to it. 

What an accomplishment!  Next time we're just buying steps.

Torches, solar lights, patio furniture, everything came out of the shed for spring.

From the upper patio you can see the BIG burn area and our needs-to-be-split log pile.  After the boulder endeavor, splitting wood will have to wait until another day. 

That area is next on the cleanup list.