The Goal: To get all that rock from the front curb to the back yard!!!Thursday night , 3 tons of "rip rap" (larger river-bed rocks) as well as 20 tons of gravel were dropped off at the house. In the desert, it is so expensive to keep grass looking nice (watering costs) so most of the landscaping out here is rock. The Phoenicians actually consider yards with any grass "high maintenance" even though mowing it would take 5 or 10 minutes because the grass patch is small. But with only the rock they have to do NO maintenance. We like grass, as does our dog. He's been tip-toeing around on the gravel since it's been down... it must be rough on his cute doggy paws. So for the second time in this long backyard saga, John rented a Bobcat to transport the pile from the front to the back. Notch, growing up on a farm in South Dakota is an expert at driving all sorts of large equipment so Friday morning we had him over to expedite the process. With Notch driving the loads back and John spreading them with a shovel and rake, most of the rocks were back and spread out by 11am (they started around 7am). With just a few more loads and some detail work ahead, John decided that he wanted to learn to drive the Bobcat. So for the next couple hours, roles were swapped and Notch spread as John drove.
It almost looks like a back yard now and I'm thrilled! We will have the curbing guy come out and lay the curbing on Tuesday or Wednesday. Apparently they have a machine that they feed concrete into and out comes little logs of curbing in the precise shape and contour that you want. Then our Sod laying party will be over the Memorial day weekend and... (drum roll please) then we will have a usable back yard!!!!I missed the first hilarious moments (with the camera) of John driving and the bobcat jerking around uncontrollably, but managed to catch his learning curve on video.
2 comments:
PROGRESS!!! It just keeps looking better and better.... and.. very professional! You have done a great job with the planning and execution of landscaping!! Are you for hire???? : )
I suppose if you can drive a $50M jet, you can drive anything... at least that the way I approach life.
I wouldn't say that desert landscape is exactly 'no maintenance', you'll be surprised at how the weeds can grow up in even the most hostile environment… just have the Roundup ready. Good choice on sod - It’s really easy to put down, and it’s useable within a few days, you just need to keep it wet until the roots start hitting the base soil. So… everything should be finished by the time we go to San Francisco, right?
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