We Had A Productive Holiday Weekend

I had a lovely Memorial Day weekend, even though I couldn't swim on Saturday and I'm in some serious pain after working in the garden for most of Sunday. Sunday started out with DH and I at Gertens - a nursery that is HUGE. We had been there in the rain the Sunday before, but this Sunday was bright, beautiful, much warmer, and it was packed! It covers acres of land, and the drive in is blocks long, and cars were parked everywhere allowed. We got lucky and found a space in their parking lot, but I heard that later in the day cars extended more than a mile in each direction from the main entrance. 

Gertens is huge. We wandered through the right side and the main
building, but still haven't gotten to the shrubs and trees. Across
the street to the south is their brickyard for landscaping rock and
materials, but we wanted to use Patio Town for our stone. 

We had a specific shopping list, and pretty much stayed with it. On the way out we looked at some flagstone slabs - irregular slabs that DH wanted for our garden. They weren't the right color, though, so after we dropped the plants off at home, we headed over to Patio Town to get stone. 

Patio Town is a local firm for outdoor projects and materials. They're
east of us, near our favorite movie theater, so not too far away. 

We ended up with Wildhorse slabs, and they're quite nice - a soft golden tone that will look wonderful in the garden. I went inside for a short time, but DH was in shortly asking for my help. Four and a half hours later we were done with the job of the day - uncovering all of our buried cables for the internet and the cable TV, gathering them all together into a single bundle, and reburying them along the house. It was a HUGE job - the backyard looked rather like gophers had tossed a graduation party in it after everything was dug up. I'm not sure if my tomato plants will survive the assault. 

Wildhorse is a type of jasper and the stone that isn't
"gem" quality is great for fieldstone because it fractures
in flat layers. It's got a nice warm golden tone to it. 

I was in some serious hurt, so DH did the actual recovering of the cables and filling in the trenches. Then, after a poor night's sleep (pain in my arm kept me tossing, turning, and waking up all night), I awoke to rain. DH went out and started placing stones down, making a walkway that would cover the cables' pathway from the utility pole across the yard. He decided that we needed more stone, so we were off in the rain to Patio Town once again. 

I wish it was this easy. Our house is 50+ years old and we were
digging through old roots of trees, bushes and ferns, a lot
of overgrowth, and various structures like old concrete
pads for non-functional air conditioners. Our trenching wasn't
anywhere this easy (we were also a LOT deeper, up to
two feet deep in places). 

Unlike the day before when their parking lot was full and five forklifts were moving pallets of rock around the yard, we were the only car in a sea of mud, and there was a single forklift driver for the day. I stayed dry while DH chose more rock and had it weighed, they drove the forklift to my car and we headed home. DH spent another two hours in the pouring rain before calling the new walkway good and coming inside for a hot shower. 

I was still in pain when I went to sleep, but I was so exhausted that I had a better night. Still, 3:15 am came early and I'm sitting here, dressed for the machines at the gym. No swimming for me. I'll try to set at doctor's appointment up on my way to work today and hopefully something will be able to help this pain in my bicep tendon. I really miss my swimming, and it may be off the table for months! 

I hope all of you had a wonderful weekend, and were able to spend some of it with family and friends if you celebrated Memorial Day yesterday. Have a great Tuesday and I'll be back tomorrow!