More Rock and Roll Adventures

As I am writing this, it is absolutely bucketing down rain.  Welcome to Fall in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.  Blue sky one day/hour/minute, grey the next.

There's always a switch between summer and fall here.  I say switch and not transition because it feels like, seems like, there is absolutely no in-between with the season change.  Sunny and 70's to Rainy and 50's in, like, a day.

I am continually surprised by this change.  Every year I wait too long to put the deck furniture away.  Some years it doesn't even get put away.  Every year I don't plant bulbs in time or trim plants or do any of those responsible gardener things.  I made a minimal effort this year: some of the bushes are trimmed and the lounge chairs are folded up and leaning against the house.

But this year.  This year after the Ivy Eradication Project, I did actually finish something.  I KNOW, right?

Kevin brought home 700 lbs. more of rock the other day.  He sincerely said that it "wasn't as much as before"  (yeah, it nearly was) and that "the rocks were smaller" (no, they weren't. That's adorable)  But I'm grateful.  Not everyone has access to materials like I do.

I discovered that some folks don't realize that these have to be
placed by HAND, not by shovel.

He brought the rock home on Thursday so I could work on it on Friday.  And take Lucy to for coffee/treats/walkies in his truck instead of mine.  Here's where my brain comes into play.  Because reasons, I did not go to my office on Thursday.  (it's a whole other post, really)

So now I have scheduled for Friday: a big project outside, coffee/treats/walkies with Lucy, work at home and work at my office, AND my regular Friday chores and errands. I shouldn't be in charge of my own life, really.

Well, perhaps you just thought: why don't you do the rocks on Saturday?  Because see the first sentence of this post.  It was scheduled to begin raining on Friday and then seemingly never stop until July 5, 2021.  At least the a.d.d. enjoys racing.

I was going to stay up that morning, I really was. But at 5:30 am when Kevin leaves, it is dark now.  So my body was all "Whelp, going back to sleep."  I woke up at 8:30 when Kevin phoned with a question.  If we're being honest, the question might have been contrived and the purpose of the call was to actually make sure that I wasn't doing exactly what I was doing: Sleeping.

I got up, put on grubby clothes and left my hair in a messy ponytail under the hood of the hoodie.  I swear even Lucy looked at me like "Umm, gurl? are you going outside like that?"  #404PhotoUnavailable

Like before, I am sneaking because I don't want my father-in-law to come "help".  So I'm quietly getting into our new garden shed, taking out our new wheelbarrow, lining it with an old towel, and unloading big rock.  Then I trek it the length of our house plus a bit to where I want to finish my idea.

Remember, I had created that little garden space where the ivy used to was.  Then I bordered it haphazardly with rocks and called it done.  But every time I looked at it, it just looked unfinished.  It looked exactly like what happened: I kind of cobbled a border together with what I had.

Before

Also remember: this is a steep, slippery, clay hill that is now also damp.  SUPER.  

There is music you can put on your ticktockapp posts that goes along the lines of "I'm going to do some sketchy sh*t do dah" to the Zip De Doo Dah song.   I actually found myself singing it as I'm trying to get these rocks up onto the hill.

Anyway...so easily distracted...

I finished the border around the little garden then trailed the rocks down along the ferns and down to the lawn, matching the first rock cascade that I made.  I'm super sad that it's late in the year and I won't get to see it with new growth ferns for MONTHS.  But it already looks better and natural, instead of "oh, had some extra rocks did ya?" 

After I finished that area, I had to return to the other cascade to fill in where rocks had shifted and I had also run out of Want To.  This also required going back up to the top and unloading rock from the road.  The path is now completed, from the road all the way down the hill to the lawn.  Next Spring I will probably add some cheap solar lights 

We waited too long for the landscaper to come out one last time.  I'm going to probably weed-whack a portion of that hill myself while Kevin is at work. (forgiveness vs. permission)  I just want to see what it will look like when it's all cleaned up.  The hesitation is that someone (me, totally me) has allowed Lucy to dig in that hill all summer.  So it's now more treacherous than before.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do for next summer's project.  I guess that's what the winter is for.  

I've always wanted a fire pit.  hmmm.