Landscaping Theater Act III

Before I continue with the description of the week-end’s performance, I would be remiss if I neglected (again) to tell you the most interesting thing from Friday evening. While I was working on my own little stage, I heard a noise behind me, coming from the wooded tree-line. Just as I turned, a deer leaped from the trees, went bounding down the swale, and darted back into the wooded path. (Or, as my husband would say, mocking my telling the story “Why don’t you just say, ’A deer ran from the trees, ran down the ditch, and ran back into the trees?’” Hopefully we can understand why one of us has the blog and one of us doesn’t.

When he saw the deer, Indy began barking and pulling on his chain with all the bravado he could muster. I’m not really sure what he thought he would do with a deer should he happen to catch it, but fortunately for him, we didn’t have to find out; I’m fairly certain that the deer could have taken him easily.

Let me pause and offer an apology here too: Rocks ARE heavy; PA was right! Sorry to disparage you!

Saturday morning: we expected to get the Georgia Bubby about 8. It arrived about 9:30. Not too bad…we weren’t too off-schedule. We could make up for lost time. (Little did we know that the football game would eat of more of the day than that…but I digress.) We shoveled for about an hour when it was then time for the 9yo to go to his football game.  The Ducks won in a blow-out, of sorts. We were cheering for the other team at the end, when they made it on the board in the final couple minutes.

Back home and at work by 2:30. Still lots of rock to shovel. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we also let the boys have another go at a Hunger Games event. Only 9 boys this time, but several neighbors joined in the Games as well, and I think everyone had fun fighting to the death (I mean, who wouldn’t right?).

Frankly I couldn’t really attempt to manage The Games this time, as the rocks were singing their siren song.  At one point, one of my boys (and if you know them at all you will know which one…God love him, he’s just like me. Leadership is strong with him…leadership/bossy. Same difference.)

About an hour into The Games, he came to me upset, basically because he knew how he wanted this battle to go and it wasn’t taking the same shape as the formulation in his mind. And this was frustrating to him. Well, I was right there with him – I didn’t think I would still have a big pile of rock in front of my house at 3 on Saturday and yet I did.

Anyway, I pointed out that he had 3 choices:

1. choose to be mad and ruin not just his day but everyone’s  (at least as long as they were at our house)
2. try to go with the flow and enjoy his friends even though it might not be exactly what he wanted to do
3. pick up a shovel and start helping spread the stone

Funny thing: I didn’t hear from him again after that.

Not much else to report…lots of shoveling, lots of spreading rock. As The Hunger Games came to an end, when the parents (who are also my friends) came to pick up their kiddos, a couple of them filled the hopper of the Buggy for us. Such nice girlfriends I have. It was nice to have a brief respite from shoveling that stone; a nice interlude on the stage, if you will. Those two ladies didn’t argue with one another at all. It was a beautiful sight to behold. We should have asked them how much it would have cost us to have THEM complete the work.

After a quick bite to eat, we were back to work…until about 9 Saturday night. Actually, I exited the stage about 8:30.

Ha – I started to say “by nightfall” which really is not true. By the time we quit working on Saturday evening/night, the rock pile in front of the house was gone, and I had gotten about 20 mosquito bites. Yes, even after spraying myself with “Off”. My husband, on the other hand, did not spray himself and received no bites. Make your own judgement about who’s sweeter.

But despite the fact that the rocks were gone, we were not finished. We were about a ton of rock short. Yeah, I know right? Who would have thought that 10.5 tons was not enough. Initially we were only going to get 8 tons, so at least my husband had the good sense to get more that I thought we needed (being in his line of work, he tends to know about such things. Rock tonnage doesn’t usually come up in preschool.) Only 1 ton short was better than 4 tons short. (Sidenote: Never would have thought that sentence would ever come out of my mouth.)

So yes, this Act should end here, but with all the other activities to which we had to attend (and to be honest…I’m a little sick of talking about and thinking about river rock), Saturday & Sunday will be combined into one Act. Thank you for your understanding. Also, thank you for understanding if this sounds more like a play-by-play narrative and is severely lacking in humor.

Saturday was a restless night. We were both on edge, fearful that the trailer for the Georgia Buggy was going to be stolen; it was too late to return it on Saturday night so Sunday afternoon would have to do. It sat at the foot of the driveway all night, with the orange barrel in front of it. At about 1:00am, Indy started some kind of crazy, freak-out barking. He NEVER does that at night, so of course we both flew out of bed to check on the trailer. Actually, practicing my role of the submissive wife, I let him make sure the situation was safe and I waited in the bedroom, listening to hear a shout or him running out the front door. But, alas, everything was fine. No one was by the trailer. The dog settled down. We went back to bed. Only to be alerted again by the dog. Three times, I believe, it happened.  There was never anyone or anything to be seen…no vehicle, person or animal was in the vicinity. All I know is that I got to lie awake in bed until 2:30. Nice! Thanks, Indy, for giving me that gift! I had some extra thinking about things to do, but just hadn’t figured out how to fit it into my schedule.

Sunday morning we hit the ground running with church. Then my husband returned the Buggy and went to a local “seed and feed” and got about another ton of river rock. It was the last that they had. And we paid a premium price for it. $26/scoop, which was about a ton; for reference, the initial load of 10.5 tons (obviously from another seller) only cost $100, so the mark-up on this ton was considerable. But we had no choice – we WERE going to finish this job T.O.D.A.Y. To be fair, they did give us a little extra because it was all they had. Scraping the bottom of the bin, so to speak, all for the love of us being finished.

So we still couldn’t get to the stone b/c my 11yo had a soccer game (it was a big win, BTW…thanks for asking). By the time we got home from the game and began work, it was about 4:30. As we shoveled from the bed of the truck, we had the sneaking suspicion that we STILL did not have enough. And yet, we were going to make it work. There were no other stage hands, no one else to help us with the scenery. This was all us. And we were going.to.finish.

Our initial goal had been to get the stone dumped into the beds and then would spread it later. But we quickly figured out that we had to spread it to make sure we had enough in each bed. We ended up robbing Peter to pay Paul (and no, we did not go to our neighbor’s house and swipe some, although as I consider that, perhaps it would have been easier…), but when all was said and done, it is now all done. Well, it’s finished. I’m the one who’s done. Stick a fork in me.

One last thing before I close, I need to quickly take a moment for those of you who are not math geeks (myself included), to remind everyone that a ton is 2,000 pounds. So my husband and I moved over 22,000 pounds of stone this week-end.  That’s a lot and has no real value to the storyother than to brag on us. Insert back-patting here.

All the beds have good coverage, our marriage is still intact, and this project is over. And the final scenes on the stage were very calm and gentle. And there was no audience (of course); one of the more quiet nights on the court.

And scene…

Still no comments on the grass allowed...we will get to it. Also please note that all the stone needs to be washed off and that it does have much more color variety to it...we are hoping that the good Lord will handle that for us in the next day or so.