I just spent the past three days unloading and placing 3 tons of chunky rock in my front and back yards… wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, rock by rock.
Whew, my back is SORE! Thank you, God, for inventing Tylenol.
This project was made necessary by the scores of dogs that are walked by our long Buggy Whip Court frontage, which is covered mostly in gravel and which many dogs use to pee and poop… and then scoot a bunch of gravel out into the street for me to clean up. It’s annoying, because the dogs’ owners just keep walking like nothing happened.
Anyway, I have several neighbors who have solved this problem by edging their property-side curb with rocks that are 3 to 6 inches in diameter. It looks clean and the dogs don’t mess with it; they just move on down the line to the next graveled frontage. Problem solved.
I had six one-ton bags of Chunky Cherry Mist rock delivered to the house on Tuesday. The total cost, including delivery, was about $300. It took about 24 hours of labor, spread out over three days, to install the rock apron. I even had some rock left over to do a honey-do job in our backyard.
Had I contracted with one of the local landscape firms to do this job, it would have cost me about $3,000.
While I was high-fiving myself for a job well done, we got a notice from the H.O.A. “compliance” Nazi that our 18” high, galvanized metal mesh border at the bottom of our 5’ tall metal fence surrounding our backyard… to keep our small Boston Terrier “Vinnie” on the property… is ILLEGAL in Sun City and will have to be taken down.
Of course, absent that mesh, Mr. Vinnie would hit the road the next time anyone would walk their dog by our property. Our older Boston Terrier “Baby” is too big to fit through our fencing (it’s maybe 4” between metal slats) and 2-year-old Boston Terrier “BonBon”, who is about the size of Vinnie, is trained not to do it. Eventually, Vinnie would be like the other two: happy to have a great yard to play in and no interest in roaming. We wouldn’t need the protective fencing.
However, I have to comply with the friggin’ H.O.A. So, that $2,700 that I saved on the rock edging project will probably get eaten up by the goddamn “pet fencing” that I will have to get a local contractor to install.
Charlie will have to do a few more tax returns to pay for this surprise expense.
The “approved” pet fencing that the H.O.A. insists that I retrofit onto my 5′ metal fence is, essentially, an 18″ replica of the big fence but staggered, so that the opening between slats is about 2″ instead of 4″.
This type of sturdy metal pet fencing is plainly visible from at least 60′ away. As mentioned, my mesh is invisible at 25′. Go figure.
Those dogs will be the death of us.