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By 8:00 PM last night, after breaking one shovel and making a trip to Lowe’s for another, I removed the three shrubs to the left of the front porch. I figured that since the temps yesterday were lower than they were supposed to be today, any progress I made last night would give me a leg up on getting through what I intended to this weekend.

This morning I was up, showered, and in the front yard working on the four shrubs to the right of the porch by a quarter of seven. Three came up without too much heartache, the fourth is still in the ground. Whenever I get a helper I’ll see about pulling it out with the truck or I may just have someone grind it down whenever I get the trees near the curb cut down. I loaded the truck with the remains of the bushes and the clippings of a crape myrtle I took my new pruning saw to and made a trip to the landfill.

When I got home I started in on the stepping stones. On the side of the house there were eight or ten hexagonal stones and a another half dozen round ones. In front of the porch and along a path to the mailbox were a bunch of slate stones in various degrees of squareness. I pull them all up and stacked them on the driveway for now. Once the slate was up I dug through the pea gravel to discover that whoever had laid this stuff used regular trash bags as a weed barrier. Ugh. This was by far the most tedious portion of this morning’s work. I raked as much of the pea gravel as I could up on to the driveway and pulled out the plastic bags in pieces. I flattened the area out and put the hex stepping stones down to keep people from having to walk through the dirt.

I’m not positive, but I’m gathering that the white trash method of landscaping relies heavily on pea gravel. Both of the beds where the shrubs had been were full of pea gravel as was the entire area in front of the porch and the area from the driveway to side deck where the shaped stepping stones used to lay. I’m not sure what I can do. I think the best course of action will be to simply dig out the planting beds and replace it with top soil whenever I grade the rest of the yard. I need to find a DIY landscaping forum to see what other options I have. I’m convinced the reason the bushes were so easy to pull up was because of the rock content in the dirt.

My eyes felt like I’d been swimming in the ocean thanks to all the sweat that rolled off my brow. My arms are jelly. I came in about forty minutes ago, stripped my clothes directly into the washing machine, and headed for the shower. The front yard looks a little better because there’s not so much overgrown stuff out there, but it still has a very long way to go. The driveway is a shambles with the piles of stones, dirt, and pea gravel. I think I’m done for the day except for indoor chores like laundry and vacuuming. Oh, and a nap, definitely a nap.

Zzzzzzzz.