I'm Not Sure But I Think This Sucks

From Butt-Head's "I'm not sure but I think this sucks" department:

A year ago, we had a pine tree in this spot, but we had it cut down because it was huge and dropping sap everywhere and covering a third of the neighbors' driveway (let this be a lesson to not only recycle more frequently but also to plant new trees further from the property line).

Many years before I placed an attractive array of river rock neath the tree, spreading out in fanciful swirly patterns.

Nature, favoring entropy, used the pine tree to cover said swirls with inch upon inch of pine tree debris, which I am now sorting through to rediscover the rocks so they can be cleaned and reclaim their former glory around the stump of she who covered them o'er.

I've done two hours of this today and only reclaimed two buckets of rocks 

This is going to take forever.

Since I have to redo everything anyway, I'm thinking of changing things. But it's going to take a lot of work. Once I've got the rocks cleared out, I have to finish chopping up the rest of the logs and removing some roots that were interfering with the original project more than a decade ago.

I don't know that I'll dig all of the roots out, but at least the parts that protrude above ground level. There's some in the patch, and one in the yard as well.

I'm sorting rocks out too. Big rocks from the smaller rocks, so I can re-establish the swirly patterns.

I'm using another rock garden that also needs to be cleaned out too as a staging area for the materials I'm moving As I said, this is going to take forever.