Out back

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Still have more days off than I've used so far this hiatus. Here are three snaps of a job I dreamed up 2 years ago. I think slow.

I started the project 2 years ago by buying the wrong kind of cedar for the frame, but only discovered that after assembling the frame last summer. Since worrying about that for a year didn't transform the cedar into below-grade quality, I decided to sink it into the ground just to avoid more delays. I assumed this would would be a crap job that I'd have to redo in a few years anyway.

As it turned out, the quality happens to be pretty high. The photo on the left shows the frame with a compacted bed of soil and brick rubble, with four sacks of patio-base gravel (also called roadpack) tamped down over it manually. (The brick rubble backfill was probably a stupid idea that I will regret later, along with the off-spec wood.) The three sacks pictured just about filled the frame to where it needed to be. Lots more tamping ensued with an 8 x 8 cast iron plate mounted at the end of a heavy garden-tool handle. My big innovation was discovering that the paver stones are the same thickness as a 2 x 4, so I screwed together a float-type device, center picture, to level the roadpack to the correct recess, pulling the device back and forth and merrily tamping it all until I was pretty flurking sick of it. The right-hand photo shows all the stones in place, with roadpack having been carefully poured, swept around, tamped, etc., to fill in all the cracks. I should have wetted the stone for this final photo so it would match the other two. The pavers aren't as pale as they appear in the final shot. If you want a closer look, by the way, clicking on the picture should load a larger version.

Note the clump of Shenandoah switchgrass near upper left. After construction I backfilled around the frame with soil excavated from elsewhere on the estate, then moved the switchgrass to the end of the path to prevent drunken visitors from falling over the ledge. This edifice constitutes the scenic overlook of the estate, which is known to myself and the lads as Moronica International State Park.

To the left of the path is the asparagus garden, which is not doing so hot this year. Now that I have this job in the Done column, I can begin thinking about extending the path 90 degrees to the left. Why? Because some moron laid a mess of these pavers on top of playground sand on the west side of my house about 20 years ago, creating a paradise for ant colonies and invasive weeds. Two years ago I dug them out and stacked them on a palette. So this is a recycling project. Also a weight-control project.

Editor's note: Please forgive rusty, mediocre text. I am on hiatus, and so is my brain.