I wrote a post a while ago talking about knowing your limits and sometimes resigning yourself to the fact that you just can't do the things you used to be able to do. In this day and age, people are more focused on doing what is fun versus what is necessary. Given that fact, it is hard sometimes to know when to hand over the batton or accept the fact that you just can't do the things you once could.
Well, either you can't do it anymore, or if you tried, you would be sorry. I think many of us over a certain age have all been there before. It's a bitter realization when you wake up the next morning and realize you aren't in your twenties anymore. Even your thirties anymore. Unless you are of course, then just ignore this!
If you remember that post, you remember I was talking about an area of our front yard that used to be a garden bed, then when I was about ten years younger I pulled it out and put down rocks. I still can't remember what our thought was with that. Maybe we were going to put a three or four large planters in there with plants that were easier to care for. I honestly don't know.
Over time, the rocks got overgrown and we ended up with the image you see above. You can also see on the left hand side how I tried to start pulling the rocks up myself. Once again, I quickly realized it was either going to take me all summer to finish it up, or it was going to make me immobile for the majority of the summer due to sore muscles and joints.
That's when 
I did have a few stipulations. They had to be careful to not wreck the sprinkler system that was underground in the flower bed, and I didn't want all the grass moved with the stones, they had to separate that out.
Although I was hesitant to hire the job out, I made the right call.
After showing up and working for a few hours over the course of about a week, they finally finished up the work on Tuesday this past week. I say they because the young man doing the job had some of his friends come and help him with it on a couple of the days. I made it clear to him that I was going to pay him and he could give up his portion of the money however he saw fit. He was okay with that.
He confided in me that the hardest part of the job was separating all of the grass out. That probably took them over half the length of the job. I had an errand to run as he was finishing up on Tuesday, so I briefly checked in with him.
I asked about how many hours he had logged, and he showed me the stopwatch he was using to keep track of his hours. It was sitting right around seven hours and he had another two he figured to be finished. I told him let's call it ten hours and he agreed with that.
I ran inside quick to take care of some things, then I grabbed the cash to pay him. I handed the folded up money to him and got in my car to take it to the dealership to have them do an insurance estimate on my mangled tire from the pothole damage.
As I was backing out of the driveway he stopped me and said that I had paid him much more than we had discussed. Of course I knew I had. Instead of the $150 he was owed, I paid him $250 and told him I was more than impressed with the work he did and he deserved it.
I'm not kidding, he even had a makeshift sifting device that looked like a frame of 2x4's with a screen on it so he could sift the rocks away from the dirt. He went above and beyond, and I know now I definitely made a good call hiring him.
Now I just need to buy a bit of topsoil to level out the area, then some grass seed to hopefully fill in the gap. With the rocks out of the way, mowing should be a lot easier and less dangerous now.
What do you think? How did he do?
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or
