Labor Day Shenanigans

And Guy thought he was going to have a relaxing Labor Day. Alas, it was not meant to be after a drive-by price check of patio stone turned into a heavy back end and an afternoon of laying it. I wish I could say this was a spontaneous patio production, and in a way it was, but we’ve been working on this area of the yard for two years, having taken out the second drive (the house used to be divided into apartments) and landscaping it. This area doesn’t drain well and it’s shady, and though a patio was our first idea, it gets really hot in the afternoon with the trapped heat and I didn’t want to remove all the grass. I was reluctant to stone it all, so we tried grass for two years, and we put in a 10×10 patio went where the grass didn’t grow well. The path around my office to the garage was a bonus, and I’m tickled in how clean it’s going to be. Still needs a few blocks cut to finish it, but we got 95 percent of it done.

That’s a lilac growing over it, one of the few plants we allowed to stay when we bought the place. Everything else needed to go, being sun-loving plants who had been lost under new tree growth. We cut back a tree to give this one more light, because it takes forever for them to get that old-tree-growth habit, and it finally bloomed this spring. Little bit of heaven.

I’ll admit that there was a small bit of carrot involved in getting Guy to spend his day laying stone, and you can see that brand new grill sitting proud. It didn’t take long to break it in. Mmmm, burgers and dogs on the patio. Works for me.