Aerie Yard Work

I've been taking advantage of the nice weather we've been having to do a little yard work.

Saturday afternoon I rolled out the tractor and combined several compost piles, leveled a patch of stone and earth, and generally stirred dirt leaves and uprooted weed plants. I tried to manually separate some of the larger stones from the heap so it will be easier to incorporate into a new garden bed.

I then turned my attention (and the front end loader) to carving out some steps in the slope leading from the yard to the driveway. The tractor helped, but it couldn't do the fine work I wanted it to do. Even it was foiled by the large number of stones in the fill soil. Time to get out the shovel and heavy Johnson bar again. I had a couple of pieces of 6 x 6 pressure treated timbers that would serve as the risers of the steps but not nearly enough to finish the job.
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Sunday morning I thought I would get the pressure treated lumber at Lowes but they only had 12' lengths--which they couldn't cut for me. Way to long for me to haul home and I left my chainsaw in the garage. So I purchased 1/2 diameter rebar which I then cut into 16" lengths to anchor the 6 x 6 when I did get it. I then took the rest of Sunday off.

Well, except for potting up all the flowers Terry left using potting soil I purchased at Lowes.
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Monday morning I got two 8' long 6 x 6s from Arnot Building Supply. Even 8' is longer than my Tundra's bed, but there's just a smidge of wood hanging over the tailgate. Home again, I cut two 36" lengths from one and another 36" length from the second. With materials already on hand, I now had enough for five steps. With a 6" rise and about 16" run, I would get almost all the way to the surface of the driveway. If I make the runs shorter, I would need one more step to get there. If I get ambitious enough....

I had five bags of red rock left over from the steps I built two years ago. They went into the top of each step. A layer of stone from one to two inches deep.

New stairs from yard to top of driveway.

Digging stairs into the slope produces a heap of debris. I set that aside to be sifted (a three foot square of 1/2" hardware cloth stretched over 2 x 4 frame) so I could use the soil in a future garden and the stones in a couple of low spots. Damn stuff is nearly 50-50 stone to clay. For every wheelbarrow of soil I was getting three or four 5-gallon buckets of stones--plus some larger ones I tossed by hand. So far, I've sifted out five wheelbarrows full of dirt and hauled it over to the "new" compost heap.

Debris pile from digging out the stairs.

As you can see, the driveway/parking area slopes quite a bit. And Terry's little yellow Aveo is awfully happy about something. Me? Not so much.

I've another half day of sifting and shifting soil and rocks about before this project can be called finished. Although there may be alterations made in the future. But I put in my 9 hours today with a break for dinner at noon. I quit at 5 PM and the showers that threatened all afternoon finally arrived at 5:30. Radar says they were much worse north and south of here. Saved by the curved hook on the western end of Armenia Mountain again! Now, at 7 PM, the sun is shining and the sky is blue.
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I--and my back--are beginning to think Maynard G. Krebs was right about work.