I Know What I Did Last Saturday

Our neighbors to the south approached us a few weeks ago with plans to finish the parkway in front of their house (aka, the space between the sidewalk and the curb) by taking out the existing shrubs and laying down a blanket of Mexican beach stones dotted with some new succulents. He asked if we wanted to join in and that for a nominal fee he’d get enough stones to cover our parkway and also get his gardeners to rip out the decrepit, and broken-bottle and trash infested patches of ivy in the process, giving the stretch across the two houses a nice unified look.

I thought the stones might nicely accent the river-rock walls and so I checked with Susan to see what she thought and she was cool with it so we gave the plan the thumbs-up.
Three weekends ago the gardeners got started and got rid of the ivy and the shrubs and afterward our neighbor asked if we wanted them to demo the long cracked and semi-hazardous concrete slab that had long ago uniformly spanned the dirt between the curb and the walk and we said hell yeah again.

The next week the gardeners were back and did just that, as well as laid down the beach stones until they ran out.  And in looking repeatedly at the parkway directly across from our front steps afterward, I knew we had to do something to replace the concrete slab — not just because the stones needed a bit of a visual and textural breaking-up, but also because any passengers exiting or entering cars parked there might have an unsteady time of it walking across the loose rocks.

So Saturday morning I raided our backyard stack of its dwindling stock of the home’s original brick foundation material and after an hour or so of digging and laying and stuff had a bridge back with which Susan and I are both pleased as we await the remainder of the beach stones to be installed (click to triplify):

parkway.jpg