As you know, last year we didn’t go on the hike. This year we plan to and we are getting into shape. This last Sunday we hiked park of Devil’s Backbone. I brought my GPS and I was able to pull down the data and add photos to it:

Click on the map above for an interactive version.

Take a look and tag your favorites with a “star”, we’d be interested in knowing which ones you guys like.

We are very happy with our landscaping and earlier this week at an HOA meeting, many people complemented us on how nice our landscaping looked! We are really happy with it, with the exception of being oversold on rocks for the north side.

With the temperature well below 0 at night, it would be nice to park our cars in the garage, but a 5-6ton pile of rocks stands in our way. I am going to try to put it the rocks on Craigslist or some other internet site to try to get rid of it.

Tomorrow we are having a heat wave; it is supposed to get up into the 30s! Hopefully I will be able to take some better pictures of our lights and our house.

This year was the first year that I was able to set up my train set around the tree. Last year we didn’t have a tree (because we had just moved in to our house) and the year before that there wasn’t room in our Windsor house:

We also put up lights outside. Michelle put up a bunch of snowflakes and I put up lights on the deck. The outside lights are solar and we are still trying to figure out what is going on with the string lights. Only one of the three sets is turning on.

I will get a better picture of the house on a tripod when the weather gets a little warmer. Tonight when I took this picture it was 14° outside.

I guess I will be doing a second layer on top of what we have. Our neighbor expressed interest in buying some rocks for his yard, but just to fill in holes.

If anyone else in the area would like some rocks, let us know:
Today I finished up spreading the rocks on the north side of our property. I’d like to say I was done, but we have a little extra:

I believe we are about half way done; although, we have tons of gravel left.

The gravel was supposed to be delivered yesterday but our landscaper didn’t make the call. We called him at noon today and he said that we were third in the delivery line. At about 4:50pm the rocks were delivered.
We had started putting down fabric, so when they arrived we were ready to go:

The orange spray paint marks where the drip line system is. I’m not sure how the paint will do against the elements but if it does stay, it will be nice when/if we plant bushes by the driveway.

As we worked, we learned that one wheel barrow covered about 16 square feet. I lost count of how many wheel barrows we moved, but after two hours we were exhausted and done for the evening:

Tomorrow we plan to continue moving the pile of rocks. Hopefully we will finish…time will tell. On the left is the beginning, on the right, is the end of day one.

Our landscaper thinks we would need more than 16 tons. If I were to take a guess, I’d say we probably have enough.