Slipping and Stones

No, this post is not about slipping on stones, but rather my car slipping due to a load of stones in the back.  On the Saturday before Easter and I saw a post on Facebook of a local resident getting rid of some landscape stones that are used as bed mulch.  I have used landscape stones in some beds due to the fact that they do not have to be replaced annually like mulch.  I messaged him and got more information, but he said he needed them gone Easter Sunday.  I was not going to do such labor on Easter Sunday so I passed.  But it came back around.  I got stuck in my yard when trying to haul the stones on Monday morning.

Tire Marks

On Monday morning after my walk I saw a post that the person still had the stones available and wanted to know if I wanted them. He said he had ten others interested, but my wife said that probably was not the case.  I got in my car drove to the west side of town and took a look, called my wife and had her use my computer to message the guy that I would take the stones.  While larger than what I would have used, they were about 2" when I would have used 1", I thought I cannot pass on free rock.  I had two intended purposes, first to add more to my front bed that has rock, and second to use it as backfill during my repair of the limestone wall I built 29 years ago this coming September.  Winter and chipmunks have taken a toll on the wall over the ensuing decades and some rocks disintegrated and broke apart in slivered sections along their sedimentary lines due to freeze and thaw.

More damage, which I raked and forked to raise up
the depression

So, it was that Monday when I loaded up the first of four or five loads of stone in the back of my little Vibe.  Not knowing when I would get to reconstruction of the wall, due to the need for some more limestone, I decided to try and drive the car around the front of the house to the northerly side of the house and unload on the north side of the house.  Well it had rained over night, and in trying to turn the corner to the north side and go up slope at the same time, I got stuck.  I decided to unload the stone in the front bed, and then try to move the car.  That did not work either. I likely made matters worse as I gut stuck near a tree, which prohibited me from backing up any decent amount. The front wheels spun and made mud, due to what I later found was over an inch of rain the prior night, at least according to my rain gauge.  I tried to back up, but no luck, because of the tree.  I then decided that I would need assistance, so I went into the house and got my wife to drive while I pushed and we made no head way.  She wanted me to call a tow truck to see if they could figure it out, since the tree was in our way.  Before resorting to using our just purchased AAA, I got an old rug and some fiber board and laid it under the front tires and pushed as my wife drove and that finally did the trick as we got further west and north along the side of the house, to turn the car and then back down the side property line to the street.  Well, that incident and my wife's comments put an end to my driving on the lawn.

I went back and obtained three or four more loads  of stone and backed up into the drive and then loaded up a five gallon bucket to haul to the front bed for storage.  It was a dirty and hard job, and I have found out it is not near as easy to haul five gallon buckets, even resorting to partially full, at age 62 as it was at age 33.  The next day I spread some of the rock in the front bed, and left a long linear pile for use in the wall project.

Twenty nine years ago I built the two tiered wall as a rose bed, but the upper bed has been converted to mainly perennials. The wall needed to be rebuilt before the roses started to take off for the season.  I was going to wait to get the limestone after Safer at Home expired on April 24, but when extended to after Memorial Day, I realized I might as well start it now.  On Friday, April 17 I went to Midwest Decorative Stone, which I guess is an essential business although JoAnn Fabrics is not, and picked up 10 retaining wall stones, or almost 500 pounds worth.  When I constructed the wall they carried what they called quarry stone, and the owner of Midwest handpicked quarry rock that varied in size and dimensions for me to build the wall.  They were a young business at the time,having just started operation in 1991.  They no longer carry that type of rock, but carry a split limestone of more equal dimensions.  Hence, I found myself, with the assistance of my wife, taking down over two thirds of the lower retaining wall and reconstructing it using mainly old stones and several of the new rocks I picked up to replace those that had broken and were disintegrating.

I had rebuilt a small part of the lower wall last October, so most of the front wall, but for perhaps two feet, has now been rebuilt.  With the original build, I used stone backfill, between the limestone and the dirt with a landscape fabric between the dirt and the stone.  I found out that was not chipmunk proof as they dug in and out and the fabric got mixed with dirt in their mining.  What I decided to do was encase the stone back fill with fabric on all four sides, so they cannot, or hopefully not, mine out the backfill rock.  I had to haul several buckets of rock from the front yard to the back for the reconstruction.  My wife also would not let me drive our Jeep, which I used to get the limestone, on to the lawn, as she was concerned I would make more of a mess.  So, I hauled those to the backyard by hand too.  It was about six hours of hard labor.  There was a point early on when my wife seriously suggested that I should hire the repair out.  But, we persevered. I told her this is a fun project.  I think she shook her head.

Reconstructed lower wall section

In the end, the lower wall is now rebuilt, and more landscape stone remains for me to haul and save for some other project.  The worst part of reconstructing the wall is the hauling of materials to the backyard. Tear down and rebuild is a great deal of work, but provides satisfaction when you see the completed project. Slipping wheels, with a car back full of stone made the job more difficult, and now I have to hope the lawn comes back from the damage caused by slipping with a trunk full of stones.