A Redesigned Path

Dana loves rocks. I do too. They don't require any water and, they can take all kinds of forms from gravel and river stones, to boulders and paving stones, but they are HEAVY.  This is not good when they have to be transported anywhere, but especially on our hilly property with many stairs.

The current project involves redesigning the path in the front of the house. Now that the palm trees have been cut down and the stumps laboriously whittled down to ground level, there is a nice space for what Dana likes to call a rock river, which will also serve as a path. 

We began our day at the 'rock store'. I am always bemused at the idea of actually paying for rocks, especially when we are surrounded with them, but these had to be just the right sort of rocks. There are no flat, paving stone size rocks lying around here, so we went to the rock store to buy flat flagstones. There was a church behind the wall of the rock place and I wandered over to take a picture and surprised a fox who had made her den in a pile of rocks. I took her picture too, but she was a little too far away for a clear shot.

Home again, we had to create a 'clean slate', Dana's orders,  moving all the small river rocks out of the way so that the flagstones could be placed. She would have preferred more tidy piles, but the best we could was shove them out of the way. Once the flagstones are placed and leveled,  we will have to move some of the river rocks back and figure out what to do with the rest of them. These little rocks are everywhere and we have already moved tons of them from one place to another. It's not easy, so Will came over for awhile to help. 

Once again I have to wonder about our sanity,  moving from a nice flat lot with a tiny yard to this place, but of course that is exactly why we did move. We have a beautiful view instead of one of our neighbor's kitchen, and we love projects. We certainly couldn't do it without Dana and her family, however.  Jim turned up with food for lunch, probably because it was easier to bring food for everybody than to get Dana to stop.