A Bit of a Rocky Mother's Day

I couldn't resist the pun in the title, even though Hubby will roll his eyes at me when he reads it.  Actually this has been the BEST Mother's Day I've ever had! For the first time, our family feels complete.  Hubby served my first ever breakfast in bed and I started crying (what a softie I'm becoming!).  Curly made me a cute mug at church, and our family went out to a nice brunch.  Tonight we have plans for an evening hike on Kamiak Butte. The day couldn't be any better!

But the reason for the title of this post, is that this afternoon while the Littles slept, Hubby and I finished rebuilding our rock wall!  I am beyond thrilled to have this project done.

 

As you can sort of see in this picture of the kids on the trampoline, a section of the back wall had been pushed out by roots and was lying in large, scattered chunks on the ground.  More was falling all the time, which made that part of the yard dangerous for the kids, as it was possible a rock could hit someone if they got too close or climbed on them.

Last week, then, Hubby, who was dreading the project, tore out all the rocks along a large chunk of the wall.  He leveled the ground, built a solid sill, and then began rebuilding the wall.  Neither of us had ever done anything of the kind before, so his first try had to be torn out, and he was frustrated.

Yesterday, he had two rows done, barely above the dirt, and he welcomed help on the project.  So yesterday and today we worked together, me on the puzzle aspect and him on the brute force, as I could barely lift the smallest of the chunks into place.  But dry-fitting rocks is a mental puzzle as well, and I really enjoyed helping with that part, finding just the right shape to lock in the next piece, and keeping everything at the right angle to lean into the hillside, but not steep enough to be pushed out by the weight above.

We both wanted to get it done, so working during nap-time, holiday though it was, seemed the best time to do it.  Both of us felt a lot of satisfaction when we called it done. Hubby, because he rarely gets to do physical labor as a computer programmer, and it simply feels good, and me because the wall is now safe, and I got to help accomplish something.

People advised us to buy pre-fitted masonry, but we both really loved the look of our higgledy-piggledy stone wall, as if it came from somewhere in the old country.  So as usual, we took the hard way, and rebuilt the existing wall, and we love it!  We also feel empowered as adults and homeowners, that we could actually fix something like this ourselves. Yay for the wall.