Enough rocks!

We kept busy this weekend. Friday afternoon we drove out to friends ranch to check out the stones he wants to get rid of. Not rounded river rock, so that was good. The color of a lot of it was darker and redder than we would use inside the house, but we figured we could use it for a fire pit or a garden waterfall rockery - and our other friend can use them at his place for landscaping. Saturday morning we went to friends house, where our little dump trailer is stored (he gets the benefit of using it whenever he needs) and picked that up and back to the ranch to start loading. One of the groups of rocks was on a pallet with a wire cage around it. I'm surprised the pallet held up! DH was able to use the little backhoe machine by wrapping some strap around the thumb and the pallet and set that on our trailer. The rest........had to be loaded with the little backhoe thumb/bucket...or by hand (ugh!).
 

He also offered a bunch of other stuff laying around there for free. A bunch of water line poly pipe in different sizes, a bunch of "dunnage" and landscaping boards, which DH can use to put underneath our firewood to stack on (friend needs those too), a couple of "risers", with lids, for like septic system use, and a plastic waterfall liner/spillway that is pretty good sized (for that waterfall we want to put in!).  We also took a few stepping stones that we put here at this house. It took us about 2 1/2 hours to load it all in the trailer and back of pick up. We were loaded down heavy. We drove the 10 miles back to our property and dropped the trailer off.

Landscaping boards and a critter who I think came with us. LOL

The guy also had a bunch of old barnwood lumber he was trying to get rid of. We just didn't have any room for that, so didn't look at it too close. After we got back to our place friend texted asking if we wanted the barnwood. DH said probably not, as at this time we don't really have anywhere to store it, nor haul it, now that our trailer was full, sitting at our property. We decided to drive back to the ranch to take a look at it. They were like 16' long pieces and we really couldn't think of anything down the road we might use it for. Some pieces pretty old and rotting (I'm sure it was from a barn built like 100 yrs ago). So, we just decided to pass. We don't need to add more stuff to all the stuff DH already has (and doesn't need/use!).

That was all exhausting and we were sore and tired from all the lifting (we had to do all the dunnage boards by hand and some of the smaller rocks). We just relaxed, I made dinner, and rested up the rest of the evening.

We got the invoice for all the rockery work in my email Sunday morning. It was about $1500 less than DH was expecting. In looking at the machine hourly rental rate, it looked to not include the operator's hourly rate (which he had told us would be included in the machine rate). DH called to check on it, to make sure we weren't supposed to pay the operator directly and nope, it's all good! Nice!!

Sunday we decided to go out to the property to get all that polypipe tied up and measured, to get an idea how much we had. It was in lots of sections and various sizes and psi. DH said most will only be able to use for like our sprinkler system. There is about 1000' there. DH figures he can use about 500' of it for the sizes/psi's we need. He'll offer rest to his friend or just put on Craigslist or something, at some point.

While we were their our neighbor came outside and said she just realized she could see part of our back rockery from out the side of her kitchen window. She said she came out to tell us it looks amazing. Her dogs were barking like crazy (of course) and we did discuss that a bit....basically we all said we hope they get used to us being around. She had a couple of them when they lived in the city and said they were fine outside. But, I'm pretty sure she did not have the one major barker, he's not that old and the other major barker (same breed) is still basically a puppy.

Yesterday afternoon DH decided to bite the bullet and get himself a little room to actually work out in his shop. As I've mentioned it's stuffed to the rafters and the little bit of space he had inside our garage has now been taken up by those two big gate pier forms he made. So, he actually moved his old car outside and parked it in back next to our shop. That basically gave him almost a whole "bay" worth of space. He moved the pier forms from the garage to there, so he could finish working on the rebar for them. He also moved the gate "arms" he had made recently to there (they were stored on the floor, underneath his pickup in the garage.) He wants to paint them black, so needed to clean up the metal first, before painting. He's so particular about every little thing that having this old car just sitting outside is bothering him, because the window seals are old. But, he really did enjoy having some space to work, in a warm shop, with good lighting. Soon he'll be able to take those gate piers and arms out to the property and then he can put the car back inside.

Woke up to a bit of snow this morning. Winter is still trying to keep a hold on us, that's for sure.