So Much Depends on a Red Wheelbarrow,,,

Here, with apologies to William Carlos Williams, is my adaptation of his famous poem:

So much depends
on a red wheelbarrow
Filled with pea gravel
Behind the red Ranger.

[It really is a Ranger; the tailgate comes from a salvage yard. Mazda trucks and Rangers are built in the same Ford plant.]

Yes, today I made one more--and hopefully last--trip to Seneca to get a load of pea gravel, 1100 pounds of it. It's an 18-mile round trip, and I have been down there 4 times now. Because my old wheelbarrow has rusted through and is all bent up, I went to Home Depot late last week and bought a red wheelbarrow. It has already been used quite a bit.
That's only 8 shovelsful of pea gravel in the wheelbarrow, but it's like having 8 flagstones in it. Below you see the bed of the truck, only about half full but certainly heavy enough.
Once I got home, I loaded the wheelbarrow several times and dumped the gravel on top of the stones, then used the flat side of a rake to spread it and two brooms to sweep it in the cracks. the following two pictures show the results, not finished but at least roughly in place. Click on the photos to enlarge them.
The one above looks toward the pond. The following is a nice view of the fountain area and the rest of the "patio." Tomorrow we will touch up and hopefully complete the project, allowing me to finish painting the garage trim. I will wait till after our company has come and gone before I get back to washing and treating the cedar of the pergola and trellis for painting.
We bought the stones a week ago Saturday. They were delivered and dumped on the street a week ago today, and now, a week later, stones and gravel are in place. It has been a hot, physical week's worth of work. We never knew we could do so much work in such a short amount of time.

A footnote to the trips to Seneca: The May tornado that swept through north of Seneca and killed 8 people destroyed several homes and businesses and ripped up trees on both sides of Highway 43. Those homes and businesses are being rebuilt now. We drove past that area each time on the way down to and back from Seneca. You should see all the uprooted trees piled up in fields. It must have been a massive storm.