Just a quick post today about the progress on the rock-filling of our top garden.
I went and picked up another 100′ roll of landscaping fabric to finish off the few areas that we missed when we ran short on our other roll. I am sure that this roll won’t last long either, especially if we manage to install a few more walls this year.
I have been antsy lately, and unable to sit still, so while I was off for a few days, I decided to haul as many loads of rocks as I could on my own. The good thing is that our pile is in our front yard, so it is downhill to the garden bed I am dumping it in. It is still heavy lifting, dumping it into the actual bed, and then raking it into place, but at least hauling it downhill saved some of my energy and strength. The pile itself is finally looking a lot smaller than it was when we first got it dumped on our lawn a year ago. It will be gone by the end of this summer for sure….and then we will likely get another load. More walls to build yet!
I managed 9 loads on my own on Thursday, which covered the front half and part-way into the back portion of the garden. At first it was a little bland looking, and I was slightly disappointed with the final look, but after a quick rinse, the colours of the rock started to pop. We had purposely bought one called “Autumn Mix”, because we wanted the colours to match the rocks that we had scavenged from a cut block years ago. A few more rain-falls and the bed will be quite colourful.
When K got home from work, we decided to put one of the barrels into the garden to see how quickly it balanced and how it would look with our rock. We love it! It is definitely the look we were going for and is turning out very much, how we had hoped it would.
Over the weekend I was able to spend some more time soaking up some sun, and finishing off the rocks on the back side of the cedars. It took another 9 loads, and some careful manouvering in a few areas in order to dump the rocks as close to where I wanted them, without them rolling out of the garden. It looks great and is nice to have that completed. My next step will be to drill some slightly larger holes in the bottom of the barrels for the irrigation to be run through. We plan on having a mini-sprayer in each barrel in the centre.
I’m looking forward to when we can take all our shrubs out of our front yard beds and replace it with rock just like this garden bed. I have to build some nice big planters first. We don’t want to lose the foliage out front, we just want it in a more aesthetically pleasing format and easier to handle.
Currently they are just cedar bushes with vines that grow through. I would take the vines out, but they are way at the back and I would have to climb over the spider infested bushes to get to the root of the vines…which there is absolutely no-way I am willing to do, so until we take the bushes out, it will just look a little out-of-whack.
JK Building The Dream 