two day project

I know this doesn't look like a two day project, but it was. I thought it would be relatively easy to plant a rose, wouldn't you? The area had a dying Caryopteris in  the place, and how hard could it be to remove it, and plant a rose? Well, let me tell you. First I had to scrape off all the gravel around the bed, which of course needed to be sifted to remove the fines and wind-blown sand. This extended to the end of the bed on one side (almost seen in the top right corner) and around the shrub to the left. This was quite a length ordeal, with the decaying landscape fabric underneath, which had degraded to loose synthetic fibers which caught in everything - the shovel, the wheelbarrow, my hands, blew in my face. Try extricating sand and gravel out of that! Sifting gravel is no walk in the park either. Then there was the matter of loosening the soil, which took half a day and a pickaxe to get more than a few inches down. Then I was out of store-bought compost, and I sure wasn't going to the store to get more during this COVID-19 time. My own compost was still a little raw, so I had to use the pickaxe again to chop up the bits and then dig it in. Once the soil was loosened and amended, it was way too much to fit into the spot. So that had to be dealt with. Irrigation needed revision. So a day and a half later, the roses are planted, then watered, to settle all that soil. While that was settling, I turned the compost pile. Then there was mulching, then finishing sifting the gravel, and then spreading the gravel. Whew!
I'm pooped.