Day 104 - Rocky Times

We weren't all too worried that the soil of our backyard wasn't the greatest. We had a ton of better soil in piles scattered throughout the yard and down into the wetland. As the yard was scrapped and the lawn removed, we were able to remove a ton of rocks. Some of them would be used to border our garden and be stored for other future projects. Some were pushed down into the lower area of the yard and buried with some of the dirt piles. The yard was getting cleaned up and more and more treasures were uncovered and discarded.

When the dirt was pushed down and away from the house, it made a nice pile that my kids called mud mountain. When the work was done for the day, the kids loved exploring it. I told them it was only temporarily as that mountain would eventually be pushed back towards the house to officially level the yard. However, Mother Nature intervened and unleashed one of the heavier rain storms we had experienced in quite a while. The wet side of the barn was wetter than we had seen it, cementing our reasoning for this project in the first place. The area in front of mud mountain became more of a lake and the project came to a halt until the waters receded and the land dried up and hardened a bit. While the adults were bummed to see stalled progress, the kids enjoyed a longer and wetter time to explore their not  quite completed backyard.

Eventually, the waters receded and the backyard bonanza continued.When all was said and done, we had a much more level backyard that was mostly rock free and in a much better position to place and plant things for a playful and more scenic backyard.

Now, the time had come to get started on the grading around the barn. Though Mud Mountain was flattened, a new mountain took its place. A large pile of gravel soon graced the front of the barn and was often visited by the children. 

Slowly and surely, the gravel pile got smaller. But our problems got bigger. A much rockier issue had developed.