That Guy Craig and His List

Today we got all of the monkey grass out of the yard around the fountain and.....got rid of all the rocks too!  We have a love/hate relationship with Craigslist.  We have had good experiences with it for the most part but people can be flakey and you have to have the mantra of "first come, first serve".  I would say the #1 most important part of using it is to get a free Google Voice cell phone number.  They won't know your real phone number when they call/text and it is just an element of safety.  Today I posted all of the rocks up on for free - and a nice couple who live south of Midland came by and picked them all up.  They even took the stuff we were going to toss because they said it was easier for them to get rid of it since there is a caliche pit close to their property.  It feels really good for the yard to look like progress has been made and it has been overcast all day long so the weather has been on our side!  The river rocks still linger and we need to start scraping them up and figure out how to get rid of them.  No one on Craigslist seems to want them if they are not pre-washed and properly packaged.  Since I am not a garden center, they are out of luck!

The other project we started today was seeing what these trails of river rocks are that run around our workshop.  We bought a pick ax last weekend at Lowe's and M insisted we would never use it....it's the #1 tool used on these outdoor projects lately so the joke is on us!  The guess is that the trenches are french drains - but they aren't proper french drains.  A correctly built french drain is a trench that has rocks and then a pipe with lining around it to divert the water.  The "french drain" at our house is a trench lined with what looks like aluminum flashing, no holes and rocks on top of it.  We have managed to rip out one side of the drains and have the side of the shop to go so who knows when that will get done.  Our old house had french drains built into the gutters which was a nice feature except that they were not done properly and our yard was always so squishy when it rained.  Our new house does not have gutters but we are considering having them installed at some point.

We also made a run to the citizen's collection center which is actually really nice and like the one our town had back in DFW.  I wish they were open on Sundays because it would probably encourage us to power through projects all weekend long if we could make another run.  We even met this little 4 ft long guy over by the tree limb/organic drop off section.  No rattle so we aren't sure what he is!