Saturday, July 20, 2002

Excavation and a Sidewalk in Front

December 2001 to July 2003

Linda suggested that she would like to put herbs in the peninsula between our driveway and the neighbor's driveway. So I dug up this area and removed all the rock, upgrading the soil and putting compost in to replace the rock.



In the above photo you can see both one of the large rocks that came out and the wheelbarrow full of the smaller rocks. Also you can see the irrigation lines.

The irrigation lines are of two types. The larger line is the main line that provides all the water to the entire sprinkler system. The water line from the city goes thru the water meter and then splits into the line for the irrigation system and the line that goes into the house. The main irrigation line goes straight back to the back of the house, turns right, goes across the back yard, turns right again, out to the front yard, turns right again, and across the front yard. The individual irrigation zones split off the main line as necessary.

The other irrigation line in the photo is the line for Zone 1, which runs back and provides sprinkler heads for the peninsula.


Once this area was dug up and improved soil brought in, Linda decided it was too shaded to grow herbs, so we have covered it with hardwood mulch and large landscape rocks.

In addition, it seemed that we needed a walk way to get from the garage and driveway around to the backyard. To do this, we outlined the area we wanted to be a walk way, and outlined it with a line of white limestone rocks. Then we took the dirt out of the walk way area and put in sand and decomposed granite, to form a base. Then we put stone on top of that base and filled in the space between the stones with a flexible grout.



The stone for the walkway is Oklahoma Thin Flagstone, with decomposed granite underneath, and Polimeric Sand as a grout. We got these from Custom Stone Supply, $398.05.