Moving Rocks

There's just something about working in the garden, even if the garden doesn't exactly exist yet, to make me feel great. Our backyard gets to become one this year, but it's going to be a very long process. The first step today was to remove some very old dead sod next to the back porch (aka small square of cement) and replace it with some of the flagstones from another part of the yard. Moving the stones will allow the hose to be up and off the ground and gives us quite a bit more garden space.

I wish I'd thought to take a "before" picture, but I didn't. The ground looked something like this, only bordered on one side by the A/C unit. The horizontal stripes are caused by the rain dripping between the boards of the deck above. Great sod, don't you think! Funny what no water for a LONG time will do. This particular spot of ground will get to host a bed of strawberries in the near future. (Yum!)



This is the after. It's not perfect, but I moved all those stones by myself and I feel pretty happy with the results. Everything is settled in pretty well and none of them rock when I step on them- I hate that! I'm trying to decide if I want to place smaller rocks to "smooth"out the bottom edge. We'll see.


I found a few "treasures" under the stones- about a billion ants who were NOT happy to have their roof removed and a black widow spider. Blech! Glad it wasn't one ant and a billion spiders! About 1/3 of the stones are left. They'll get to become borders and/or stepping stones through the garden. Their former home will be home to watermelon and pumpkin plants, and maybe a cantaloupe or two. I didn't take a picture, but the ants all eventually calmed down and went back under ground. I'll have to take care of them tomorrow.

We were also given a few raspberry plants today that will hopefully get a dirt home tomorrow. Hope my calendar realizes I need a bunch of free time!