Ambitious Undertaking

Yesterday I had a whole day off work. I was so excited. You think, like any normal person, I would have a nice relaxing day and watch some TV and sleep in and all that good stuff. Well, apparently not. I must of been bit by the ambition bug because I suddenly decided to put in a path in our front yard. Hmm. What was I thinking?! Who does that?! Well, off I went to our local Home Depot and I stocked up with supplies and got to work. Here are a few before pictures.
After clearing all the red wood chips I started with the edging. Little did I know how skinkin hard the soil is here. Hammering in the stake was so hard that I quickly began to think: what in the world have I got myself into! It didn't take too long before I got a big old blister. Of course, being a rugged Canadian, this did not stop me. I just kept on hammering, even when it popped and leaked blister fluid all over the hammer. I did however stop enough to take a sad face picture.

At first there were a few stakes that I just could not get in all the way that I was going to leave them for Sean to hammer in for me but our local handy man heard all the hammering and stopped by to check out what was going on. He was very impressed and actually offered me a job! He said that he gets asked quite a bit to do landscaping but he never knows what to do. He said that he would pay me to come up with ideas for landscaping. That was pretty cool. On top of offering me a job, he also offered me a heavier hammer. After breaking the first stake completely in half with the new hammer I finally got the hang of it and was able to hammer in all the other stakes.
Then came my round vs square corner freak out. For some reason I did one corner round and then one corner square and I couldn't decide if it looked right.
After consulting with my mother and my mother-in-law, they both confirmed that it looked good. With their confidence behind me, I pushed on.
Next came the soil. I punched through the hard clay soil and mixed it in with some nice top soil.
After that I placed the stepping stones and planted the ground cover and whalaa! A path!
I'm actually pretty proud at how it turned out. I feel like a professional! I also have more big plans for this area so this is officially phase 1. First I have to recover from this ambitious undertaking. This morning I woke up with the blister, a cut on my hand, a few slivers and some very sore muscles. I guess I didn't do too bad but now I plan on taking the weekend off and head up to Canada!