Rock On

I know you folks have all been clamoring for pictures of that which has kept me away from blogging for so long. And no, I don't mean this. I mean the soon-to-be-fabulous rock garden. Sadly, it has been pretty messy work that I've been slaving away at from morning until night, so I don't have a lot of photos at different stages. Mostly, I've taken photos at the end of a long day when I was relaxing and suddenly thought of it.

I'll start out with a couple photos from the second weekend of work. This is after three days of serious work. We have installed 2.5 cu yards of dirt, plus I'm estimating about 1.5 tons of rock. We bought a half-ton of rock, and it was about 1/2 as much as we already had (scavenged from the old pond the rock garden is replacing). Here is what the right half of the layout looks like. Note, the bright orange stone says "Ethel" on it and served as the gravestone for the dearly-departed white rat. A new, less florescent, grave marker is replacing this one.


A view of the left half taken the same evening. The things standing up in the middle are the "legs" for The Mrs.'s new bench. They are sitting there while the concrete footing sets.


Here's the "over-engineered" concrete footing that I poured for the bench. Two rectangular pads of concrete extend to the surface, but it's a big giant block that's about five inches thick starting 5.5" below the surface. The form is made from scraps of redwood from the deck construction.


And here's the view from across the pond on the same day:


Just to break stuff up, The Childrens went out to feed the koi on Sunday morning and started hollering. This was one of four passing by.


Step 1 of "dig fifty foot trench" is to dig the from that little lollipop tree where the valve box is to this spot here, where we then make a 75 degree bend to the right. Rocks, apparently, need a lot of water.


It's all over but the planting. Added another 900 lbs. of rocks and another cubic yard of dirt. You can see the cute little bench in place just to the left of center. It has hummingbirds molded into the top.