Lol, poor Daniella. Ask him if he will do my laundry too. I throw it all in together and everything looks like crap, lol. I was telling John about this and he said ohhh good idea about the pots and the roots now that winter is coming he is wanting to bring in more of them so he is liking the idea of burying the pots in the ground then lifting the pots for the winter. He forgets before we did all these flower beds and I told him about this he told me I was crazy and why would I want to dig a hole and buy a pot. Just put the dang things in the ground and leave them there he said, lol. How soon he forgets now that he is getting excited that they are going to start blooming, lol. I bet we have sunken pots next year, lol. The one I had last year bloomed in the garage nearly all winter long. I think he is remembering that and realizing all those in the ground are going to have to be cut down and he will miss them blooming. Who wants to make a bet he digs up some of his to bring in the house instead of cutting them, lol.

Probably racoons or skunks feeding on white grubs. Just fill in the holes and the grass will repair itself. People will suggest spraying your lawn to get rid of the grubs so that the skunks won't dig in your lawn, but there is no need to be spraying poisonous chemicals, just because the skunks are looking for a snack. The lawn will repair itself. Ian

Digging up a plant isn't that difficult. You just want to dig out as large a rootball as possible. If you are going to pot it, you'll have to wash all the field soil from the roots. The best time of year to transplant is when it starts active growth for the year.

At the beginning of this video, notice how they use a sod cutter to remove sod and then make more passes in order to excavate a few inches of soil. I think you don't really want a pea gravel patio, as it does not make a good walking surface and scatters easily, so can be messy. You want decomposed granite or something equivalent. What makes a good walking surface is gravel of which the largest pieces are angular chips no greater than 3/8," combined with a variety of smaller sizes, down to dust. With a wide variety of sizes in the mix, the gravel will pack down tight and hard. It not only stays in place, it supports foot steps and furniture ... which would just sink into pea gravel. Why the 8' dimension? 25' length seems fine, even generous, but an 8' width seems so shallow as to render the patio barely functional for many common uses. Even 10' would be too shallow for a typical table and chairs setup. !2' is a better minimum and many people would consider that quite tight. If you could alter the dimensions you'd be much happier with the end result. The process you'd use to make the gravel patio would be much like the video, but without the sand setting bed and the pavers. For a one-time project, you could use a manual steel tamper instead of a vibrating plate machine compactor, to tamp the gravel down.