Rowland Rowland Rowland

KeepThemDoggiesRowland.com

I grew up on a farm….most of you know this. Our farm had rocks on it…..some big rocks, and occassionally the rocks were not where my dad wanted them to be, so we would load up rocks and haul them out of fields. So I grew up with wonderful free range rocks all around me…..

My current house had two little areas that although they had grass in them when I moved in (I think it was new sod) they now have two pieces of grass and a variety of weeds. These areas are surrounded by concrete, and the only sensible reason I can think they were not concreted in as well is that maybe the power into the house or between the house and the garage runs under here and there had to be some way to access it without tearing out concrete…..but according to my neighbor, the builders were a little strange in the concrete pooring and I could be wrong. So I wanted to put something here to cover up the fact that I can’t be bothered to stand outside with a hose to water the grass. (which I found out from another neighbor is actually one of the state passtimes in Texas)

We brainstormed on different ideas (which means I came up with some hairbrained stuff and Paul told me how they wouldn’t work) until I came up with a brilliant idea. I wanted something that would not cause someone to trip as they walked between the gate and the back door and that wouldn’t require a lot of maintenance from me, and also something that if I actually did have to access some pipe or something under these spots I wouldn’t have trouble getting back out. So I was watching a home improvement show that had a bathroom makeover and saw these people installing river rock tile and grouting it……this was an idea……I could lay down these tiles with the rocks on them and pour sand over it like grout and have a cool little non-perminant walk. So I went to Home Depot and Lowes websites and found the perfect thing, except for the price…..$9.99 a square foot…..and I would probably need 10 – 12 square feet. So I went over to the actual stores to see if they had anything I could use maybe on clearance.

What they had were bags of rock for $3.46 a bag….this looked promising, so I got a bag of rocks and a bag of sand and headed off for home. I dug out about an inch of dirt from my first area and put down some sand. Then I emptied my bag of rocks and started aranging them into rows. I can tell you that not only was this a pain, but it was not going to produce the smooth effect I was looking for. So I gathered up my little rocks in the rain (did I mention it started raining while I was laying out my rocks) and headed to the garden shop to look for some bigger rocks….I was still wanting river rocks, just ones that were bigger than 1″ x 1″.

When I had looked around Home Depots garden section, I saw some pavers that I thought would be cool to put in my spaces, but they wanted $8.00 a piece for them and that was just way too much. While wondering around the garden center, I came accross their assortment of rocks and low and behold their pavers were only $ .19 a pound (I just noticed there is no cents sign on my keyboard….what happened to the cents sign? wasn’t it above the 6?) So I got a little over 200 lbs of rocks and layed out a very pretty walk area (still in the rain, which was actually nice because not only did it compact my sand nicely, it kept me cool as I played in the dirt). The only problem was around the fence where concrete was poured to hold the posts in the ground and was the same level as the already existing sidewalk, but I had my handy bag of rocks and just layed some right around that area and it is now wonderful too!

What I can’t believe I’m saying (and don’t tell my dad) is I actually paid for rocks…..just thinking about all those beautiful free range rocks on the farm makes me want to cry!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 4th, 2010 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Christina. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.