Fun with rocks, cont.

I'm sure you are all still completely overwhelmed by the excitement of my last post.  A pile of rocks? Good Lord, what will they do with them? Throw them at cars? Institute a new currency? Take over the world?



Epic failure.

Don't you worry your pretty little heads -- we aren't taking over the world. Yet. But we did take over the backyard.

When we purchased our new domicile, the backyard was just as insane as the front yard. Spanning from our two back doors, there was a sand and slate/paver mini walkway. It just didn't work. We have no idea if this was left from the previous owner or from the seller that we purchased from (who had purchased from the previous owner and flipped the house.) But either way, it was an epic failure.

The photo here on the left shows how the pathway looked the first time we saw it, before we purchased the house. Ooh, sandy. (As you read that, know that I totally wrote it with a PeeWee Herman voice in my head. Remember PeeWee's Playhouse and how every adjective he came up with had a y at the end of it? "Ooh, adjectivey!")



Here's what we were working with by the time we owned the house.

Weeds, Season 1.

So that's where the rocks came in.  Or rather, the pea gravel, as Josh informs me.  P-E-A. (Little rocks.) My industrious husband hauled out the big slates and got to work on shoveling all the sand out.  There was a lot of sand.  We still have a pile of sand to figure out what to do with, so if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to lay them out there.

We then got to work digging out the grass, creating an edging, and finally, filling in the area with pea gravel. What we ended up with was this:

A paradise of pea gravel.

The slates are no longer in a pile back there -- now they're in a pile on our side yard.  But that yard isn't pretty yet, so you won't be seeing that for a while.  We are enjoying this little patio area very much, and would enjoy it significantly more if it would stop raining for longer than 15 minutes at a time. This was a HUGE project though, so if you ever decide to undertake something like this, allow plenty of time, have a sturdy wheelbarrow, and know that pea gravel goes everywhere you want/don't want it to end up.