Rock On

This is the story of a Sunday that started out somewhat lazily despite the fact that all hands were due on the lane at 8:30 that morning for our semi-annual "road day" and ended up with a new outdoor entryway leading to our most oft used door in the house leading to the mudroom. 
All the of us on the lane gather in the Spring and Fall with rakes and shovels and clippers to generally clean up our "private road". Private road sounds fancy - but that just means we don't get any services from the municipality so we are left to plow, repair, and maintain on our own. At least this Spring, unlike in years past, we didn't have potholes to fill. That job entails trips to the local excavation/road building company to fill a couple of pickups with reclaimed macadam and much more organization and planning, so without that chore this year's maintenance was mellow by comparison. It started lackadaisically and didn't take as much time. For a while this easy going start pervaded the mood of the rest of the morning and early afternoon that is until Jan decided she just might try doing something with the entry area.
That area has been an eyesore ever since I moved into this house but has evolved into even more of a blemish since Jan has redone the foundation gardens and front yard over the past three years. Most recently, it had been covered by straw so Ella could navigate the slippery snow and ice with her failing hind legs so it was really a blight to the sight.

Knock yourself out, I said. Let me know if I can do anything (but I was secretly hoping not). A little later I got the not-so-bad assignment of going to the nursery for creeping thyme and grass seed. I came home to our neighbor's truck blocking the road in front of our yard as Tim and Jan tried to maneuver a LARGE rock that Barb, Tim's wife and rock connoisseur extraordinaire, had deemed imperative to the project.

This is how they got the rock up the driveway to (near) it's final destination. Need I mention that they were pretty pleased with themselves at their engineering feat?
Once undone from the truck, they were left with the challenge of moving this monster. First they wedged smaller rocks underneath the behemoth to help lift it, then once it was finally on it's side, decided to try to split off part of it with the goal of making it lighter and less deep. That resulted in a near perfect splitting of the rock which gave us the unexpected bonus of another paver.

Now, to roll it into place. 

Jan had already prepped the area with compost and had another paver rock in place.

And, here is what it all looked like at the end of the day. Amazing!

Forgot to mention, for a bit of time during this endeavor, we had a visitor across the road.