We have blown through our rock pile very quickly once we got filling the new wall. I quickly called our go-to landscaping company to schedule another load to be delivered before the weekend and luck would have it that they could get us some on Friday. Perfect! We could do a section on Friday and finish off the last couple sections over the weekend. We have been on a good momentum finishing about a section and a half each night, which is the equivalent of 2 loads of rocks in our new cart. So we wanted to keep it up while we still have some cooler weather.

Friday morning the delivery driver calls to let me know he is just going to load up and head over to our house. I had notified them that I wouldn’t be home, but it is the same driver who delivered our last load of rocks so he knew exactly where they needed to be dumped. We also had directions to scoop from the top of the pile because we got a load last year that was mostly small gravel which didn’t work for our wall.

About 10 minutes after the first call, the driver calls back again. He has some unfortunate news. The “Autumn Blend” that we always get is out, and it is discontinued. CRAP! He said there was a scoop or 2 left but it was all the smaller stuff that filters down to the ground, and because of our note, he figured we wouldn’t be wanting that. I asked him if they had anything similar and he said that they didn’t, but if I had time after work to swing by and take a look because they could possibly do a custom mix for me. He also mentioned that there was a rock place just down the road from them as well, so if they couldn’t do a custom blend, then maybe the place down the road would have something similar.

I grabbed the address for the second rock place just to be safe, and headed over to our go-to landscaping company to see what else they had. I took a quick look when I got there and saw that there wasn’t really anything that matched or could be blended to match, so they provided us with a full refund and wished us luck. I appreciated that they had also recommended us to another company with the hopes of being able to find something that could work for us.

Off to the new rock place I went. I did a quick look and there were definitely a few options that could work. The Arizona Shale caught my eye right off the bat, but I was worried that there was too much orange in it and not enough of the greys. They also had one that was called Lafarge limestone, but it looked a little to white/grey and not enough orange. I chatted with one of the guys loading the rocks and he suggested I swing by with some samples of what we were currently using and perhaps they could do a custom mix for us. Between the 2, we could definitely create something close!

So, Saturday morning, I grabbed a little bucket and made sure to grab a variety of the colours from the dregs of our current rock pile. I headed off to the rock place to see what we could come up with. As with our summer so far, it had rained overnight, which changed the look of some of the rock piles. With my sample bucket in hand, I could immediately tell that the Arizona Shale was definitely too orange. Though there was some grey, there wasn’t enough to match. I headed over to the Lafarge Limestone and at first glance thought it was still to grey/white, but then I noticed that the area towards the front of the pile had been washed down pretty well from the rain. I matched some of the rocks to that and it was a pretty good match. Not exact, but definitely close enough that I hope we don’t really notice the difference.

So, back to the office I went, and asked for a delivery of the Lafarge Limestone. They were able to get it to us for Monday morning, so we had to take a mandatory break for the weekend. Not such a bad thing since both Kurt and I were definitely feeling all the work in our muscles. We will be refreshed & ready to go for Monday evening. Hopefully the rock is as close a match as it looks to be in the pictures!

It’s ok if it is a little different because we already have some different rock walls that we started this large project with. This is slightly different, since the change in rock will be halfway across the wall. It is what it is. I think it will be a close match and won’t be overly noticeable. If it is, we will just throw some trellis in front of it and that is where we will grow our peas! Problem solved.