Summer Projects

20150829_131845Summer Projects
(photo by Connie Blackwood)
2015

 I’ve done a lot of things this summer from attending five art shows to hiking and some travel as well. But pound for pound (literally) this has to be my most significant summer project this year.

After digging back the hillside from our garage in late spring and early summer, I started collecting rocks from an area down behind the garage and stacking them up to form this wall. With the exception of digging the rocks out of the hill behind the garage (which I did with my tractor and backhoe), all the work was done by hand, with each rock being moved several times in the process of getting them into place. The wall is about 30 feet long and 12 feet tall at it’s tallest point. Doing some rough calculations to figure out how much weight I’d actually lifted in the project I came up with the answer “a whole heck of a lot.”

This version of the wall is much better engineered than last year’s failure so I’m hoping I’ll have to find some other way to stay in shape next summer!

10 thoughts on “Summer Projects”

    1. Thanks Betty and Carol. I don’t think I’m even in the same universe as the pyramids with the way I stack rock. If it stays put the way I think it will though I’ll be satisfied. I know I’ll be quite humbled about my accomplishment when we go to Scotland this fall and see all those castles and walls there, some of which have been there for upwards of a thousand years.

    1. Thanks Janet. Maybe I should have found some brightly colored rocks and worked a spiral or other design into the wall. Should have thought of that before–not going to dismantle it and redo it!

  1. Very Impressive! My back hurts just looking at it. I think you’ve guaranteed dry springs/summers for the next few years. Now- get out of that confined space and go buy a lottery ticket- your exposure to risk quotient for that work is way to high….

    1. Steve, surprisingly my back held up quite well. In fact it’s stronger than it was. My right wrist and elbow are another matter;the work involved a lot of high impact shovel and hammer work (not much cushion in rock it seems) and it was a race to see if I finished the wall before it finished me. I won–barely. Next time I think I’ll build a rubber wall.

  2. I had a project I tackled once which also involved keeping water from entering the house. I only had to dig a drainage ditch which was a foot wide and went from 2 deep to 5 feet deep and about 100 feet long. All dug by hand.
    The french drain worked great because it has never rained hard here in California since I did the project.

    1. Alan, so you’re the one responsible for the California drought–sort of the reverse of making it rain by washing your car! 🙂 When I was digging out the hill away from our garage I found it oddly therapeutic and mentally relaxing–it’s an easy task mentally and gives you some sense of accomplishment. But depending on your mental state, it can also be just pretty boring hard work.

  3. Pingback: POTD: Accidental Geoglyph | Larry Blackwood Photography POTD and Blog

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