Swings and roundabouts

I abuse wheelbarrows. The terrain around my house is strewn with rocks of all shapes and sizes, and when I need to transfer them from place to place, I use a wheelbarrow. Since the rocks are heavy, this tends to overload the barrow.

My old barrow was starting to split at the sides, so I decided to try to repair it using my new-found welding skills.   I put a length of mild steel bracing in the turned-over edge of the barrow and welded it into place.  The result isn't pretty since the welding melted holes in the sheet metal of the barrow. On the other hand, the barrow is stronger than before, and doesn't show signs of further splitting when overloaded with rocks.  So far so good.

I have two types of trousers; black ones and blue ones.  It keeps life simple.  The blue ones are jeans and the black ones are mostly jeans; this keeps things simple too.  And like shoes, their status starts off as "best", moves on to "casual", then on to "gardening" and finally "DIY".  So I was wearing casual black jeans, that had become grubby, so before putting them in the wash I was doing a little bit of gardening in them; moving rocks with my newly-repaired barrow.  The problem is I tore a hole in the jeans on an unnoticed snag in the weld.

So the only observation left to make is that for the price of a new pair of jeans I could have bought a new wheelbarrow.    *sigh*   On the plus side, the early-season Iris are out.  Here's a couple of pics.