This weekend, not surprisingly, we continued working on the new path in the front yard. We had two main goals: (1) to loosen up the soil and mix in the soil amendment and (2) to line the path with cobble stones to define its edges.
We already had a big pile of soil amendment sitting in the driveway, which we had delivered with the birds eye gravel a few days ago. We didn’t have the cobble stones delivered at the same time, though, and here’s why. First, I calculated that we needed 1/2 a cubic yard of cobble stones to line the edge of the path, but the landscape supplier will not deliver less than 1 cubic yard of any given material. Second, the delivery trucks only have two bays, so they can only deliver two different materials at a time. Since we were already having gravel and soil amendment delivered, it would have been an additional delivery (at $50 a pop) and we would have had to buy twice as much as we needed. No thanks.
The gentleman I spoke with at the landscape supply place suggested that we come in and bag some cobble stones ourselves. That way, we would not incur extra delivery costs or have a ton left over. Plus we would be able to avoid broken stones, and actually pick out the nice looking stones. So we did.
I wish I had brought my camera, but maybe a description of the place would suffice. Essentially, there are many bays created by cinder block walls, each one filled with a different material, gravel, rocks, barks, sand, dirt, you name it, they have it. We backed my car right into the bay filled with large cobblestones, put our bags in the back seat, and started filling them up, stone by stone. We were warned to put the bags in the car and then fill them, because there is no lifting those things once they are full. I would also suggest bringing gloves. I don’t know what we were thinking not bringing any, since we use work gloves for practically everything. They certainly would have come in handy. Also, sensible shoes. Climbing all over a giant pile of cobble stones in flip flops was probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, and I’m lucky I didn’t smash any toes.
After a few other errands, we did finally get to work on the yard, but we only got about half way through what I thought we could accomplish this weekend. We mixed the soil amendment into the lower part of the yard and lines one side of the path. I think it looks pretty good; we just need to finish the other half and get some plantings in there. I don’t see anything happening until next weekend though, and I can imagine our neighbors complaining any minute now about the pile of soil amendment still in our driveway.
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Looking good – you’re making such progress!!!