Keep on a rockin me, baby!

Many people have heard the never ending story of the river rocks in our back yard.  I can't even begin to explain how back breaking this project has been.  There was a pond/fountain and in between that and our workshop, all the grass had been torn out and replaced with river rocks.  Midland is in the middle of West Texas and we are under water restrictions so a lot of people use these rocks to landscape.  It's not like I'm advocating everyone drain the water sources dry by not having any sort of xeriscape but do it so it looks nice!

Pond update here and here

So the rocks.  Midland has a citizen's collection center that is practically our second home but they do NOT take construction debris like bricks or rocks.  We were super lucky that one weekend the guy working there let us drop off two truckloads of rocks and he just kind of stirred them up into the ground.  We were able to scrape out almost all of the rocks that way and it was awesome.  But we still have more rocks and we need to tear out the fake gutters around the shed...but those are filled with rocks too.  We put a bunch of rocks into a big blue tub to try to get to a solid progress point and then the project died because you are not supposed to dump the rocks into the alley dumpsters either.  We also have rocks in the front yard that need to be torn out.  *sobs*  These rocks were turning into the bane of my existence.

The solution is to rent a dumpster.  The City has dumpsters for rent but I swear they only have two because every time I call they are unavailable.  They are first come, first serve so I'm pretty confident we will never be able to rent one.  Then I started looking into dumpster companies and WOW!  To rent a 10 cubic yard size one is a minimum of $400.  3 tons of debris weight is built into that cost but once you exceed that, it is another $65/ton of weight to dump

Honestly that one company I talked to was maybe $150 more than the City cost when you really think about everything but the husband was not pleased.  The part that killed me was even the dumpster people cringed when I said it was yard disposal like rocks.  EVERYONE HATES THESE ROCKS!    I feel like I'm going to end up being Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption where he takes little handfuls of dirt out every day into the yard for his tunnel project.  I'll just start dropping handfuls of rocks into other yards of rocks when Sky goes for walks!  

The other issue is that there is not a facility where you can drop waste off and they charge you for weight.  Killeen had a dump where they weighed your vehicle on entrance and exit and that was awesome.  When I was renovating the rental to sell it, on my way back to DFW I had to stop by to drop off my trash since I couldn't leave my trash can out in the street for infinity.  

The plan right now is to call more dumpster rentals for price checks.  I really don't feel like spending $400+ to get rid of these rocks but at this point, our yard looks ridiculous and we need to finish so that when it's warm enough, we can lay sod and call a sprinkler company.  The "after" picture below isn't going to blow people away with it's beauty but considering the amount of back breaking labor we have done in the backyard, it has come a long way!