Parking Lot

Do you remember where we started with our front hill?  Yeah, neither do I. 




I had to go back and look at photos.  There were trees and weeds and weeds and trees, swamp, poison ivy, bamboo, LOTS and LOTS of bamboo. I don't think I have a photo of it at its worst.


Every year for the past 5 years we have chopped and weeded a little more. 

Here it is currently with all of the bricks from 3 chimneys:

Here are (some of) the problems:

Every brick we find or get we add to the hill.  We've even had several people stop and say "Hey you need more bricks?"  No thanks.  I had no idea it was so hard to get rid of bricks!




But the weeds continue to grow in between the bricks and the entire hill side is run off for rain water and gray water.  Pretty? No. Necessary? Yes.




Our solution, smother the weeds with fabric and bricks and stone.  This has a two-fold purpose. The water will be able to filter down through AND it will help prevent the weeds from returning.




First had to dig out and move the flowers I wanted to keep.  The majority of them were relocated to the top of the hill behind the house by the shed. There is lots of room for them to grow and spread.




Now we can start laying down the fabric and adding the bricks. Yes, we could have just tossed the bricks on the fabric to save time, but we wanted a little more control.

Then we added the stone on top.

More fabric. More bricks. More stones. More fabric. More bricks. More stones.




No we aren't making a parking lot like the Mayor likes to joke.  He'll see when it's complete.


This is our second pile of stone. (It looks like Walt Kowalski is doing a dance in this photo.)




A third truckload of stones was delivered.




It looks so bright at night.  During the last full moon, the light reflecting off of the new stones was enough to light our path up the driveway.  No flashlight needed.

And more stones have been delivered!

 
In the rain.  The pouring rain.

 

 



We started laying the fabric up the hill and even got some grasses moved from the big garden down to the from hill.  It's starting to look like more than a parking lot now. 

Our next truckload of stones will be LARGE stones, 8inches minimum.  Then it will really start to look like more than a parking lot.