Garage Path Project

I know blogging has been light lately but it has been a busy May around here and will be for a couple more weeks.  This past week I spent much of my free time tending to the narrow path alongside our garage.  Since we moved in I have done nothing with it other than knock back all the weeds and ferns that had taken up residence.  Now that they were eliminated you could see how ugly it looked over there.

I spent much time on my hands and knees scooping up the lava rock that covered most of the area.  The top layer was easy, the bottom 2 to 3 inches was rock that was embedded in mud above the plastic weed barrier that was put in place about 300 years ago or so.  The rock is needed because the garage has no gutters and the rain needs to fall somewhere without eroding into the ground.  On the other side of the garage the water drips onto the wood that edges the lily of the valley we have in that flower bed.  After scooping up a bucketful I then rinsed the rock in the wheelbarrow with the hose a couple times before dumping it on a tarp in the driveway for further rinsing, and rinsing, and rinsing eventually deeming it clean enough for reuse.

Once I got all the usable rock out and had it to bare earth, I leveled it as much as I could before putting in the landscape fabric.  I used 10 year standard fabric, doubled up.  Now, many people don't like the fabric and prefer to use plastic as a better weed barrier, but I really wanted the water to absorb into the ground more easily.  Sure, we may still get some weeds eventually, but not many and I can just spray dead what does move in.  Since the area the rock covered before was not quite the width of the space, I bought stepping stones to put in the area.  All in all, the stepping stones worked well to take up space and the reused rock was just the right amount to fill in the area around them.

It was a big job that I chipped away at all week, but I'm glad it's done and I do think it looks much nicer than before.