On The Rocks

Today I took on a more ambitious project than I thought.  For a while now I have been annoyed when I take out the trash and recycling barrels in the morning.  They are wobbly and on uneven ground they keep falling over as I try to pull them in my rush to work.  The side of the house just has mulch, about 6 stepping stones (seen above) and a random rock about the size of a head- or so I thought.  I decided today I would start this project and begin by taking out the rock and see what I thought of using these red stepping stones to create an even path through the mulch to the driveway for the trash cans.  

So I began by digging up the relatively small rock right by the driveway blocking my path.  Simply pulling it out was not an option.  So I grabbed a shovel and started to try and loosen it.  As I used the large shovel and a small gardening shovel to start finding the edges I began to realize- maybe this rock is not so small.  About a half hour later I had managed to free enough of the rock to get my shovel underneath it and to start using the shovel as a lever to lift the rock out.  But the rock barely moved and my shovel started to bend.  So I continued to excavate the large beast that wouldn't stop growing.  I soon learned that parts of the rock were trapped under large roots and piping for the sprinkler system which doesn't work!  

Thankfully Mike (my neighbor) got home about this time and offered some random tools which I would never have even considered buying!  We got lucky a contractor lives next door!  He had a rock bar (oversized crowbar) and a giant lever system.  After using the rock bar to lift enough of it out of the ground, we were able to use the giant lever system to free the rest of the rock and force it out of its cave.  

Then came the big question- what do I do with it now?!  Considering this behemoth weighs probably over 200 pounds, we barely were able to get it out of the whole and over next to the house.  And there is shall rest until I figure out what to do next with it.  Check out this hole!!

After that I took a break.  Then I started filling in the hole with mulch and dirt from the backyard.  By using those materials in the backyard I inadvertently started another project today as well!  More on that later.  I filled in the hold with the dirt and used the remaining four red stepping stones to initiate my walkway.  Not sure when I will buy the rest of these and finish this project.  I hope to work on it and have it done sometime in October though.