Gravel in the Greenhouse

It’s been as few days since I posted anything. It’s been hectic at work and the evenings are the only time it’s cool enough to work or exercise, so the blog suffers. Lol.

A few days ago I finally took the shell off the back of the pickup and went for a load of rock. I ended up with just a smidge over a ton of gravel to bring home according to the loading scale. The poor old truck was barely riding above the axle bumpers and I took it slow driving home. It took most of the drive for me to realize I now had just over a ton of rock to unload… by hand… in the heat. *Sigh*

Upon getting home I made a path from the truck to the greenhouse, aired up the wheelbarrow tire, grabbed a shovel and got to work. I loaded up the first load in the ‘barrow and it was then I realized there would be no easy way to dump the contents since the door was too small. Ok, so I pulled a side panel off thinking I’d dump it through the side. Nope!  The panel is about 2″ too narrow to get through.

Crud.

So an elegant, if not irrational, thought occurred to me. And the result was this….

Yup, tip the whole damn thing up and prop it on a broom handle. As you can see, it made it a snap to dump the contents of the wheelbarrow into. Time to get that shovel working. About an hour into it, I had gotten this far….

I was starting to curse myself for ever taking on this project. It was still in the upper 90 degree weather range, the sweat was combining with the rock dust to make an uncomfortable covering on my arms, and I had only accomplished THAT MUCH?

Double Crud.

Enough whining, time to get back to shoveling, this needs to get done. Another hour later and things were looking better, at lest there was enough rock to cover the weed barrier. A half hour past that and I had the base pretty much full. Yay!

But….. I still have a bunch of rock in the back of the truck. Do I leave it there? Pile it somewhere else? I figure if I’m going to move it, then I dont want to move it again. And its NOT staying in the back of the truck. Ok, might as well start on the next phase since the rock is here and I’m already hot and sore from shoveling. So, out comes the weed barrier and a couple barrier staples to hold the cloth down.

Time to see just how much rock was left over from filling the greenhouse base. Turns out there was a bit more than I thought would be left over.