Patio

Spent my first day digging the patio. Manual labor sucks. Actually, I’m thoroughly enjoying it. I used to have to do work like this all the time for the county. Well, maybe not all the time, but I’ve helped dig trenches for culverts many times, which is similar to this. But I had no real stake in that work. The culverts weren’t for me, so it was just grunt labor.

This is different though. It reminds me of one job I actually took some pride in when working for the county. Out towards Brooks there was a new centerline culvert put in – one of those big cement ones.

Over the weekend it rained quite a bit and there were washouts in the dish where the rain ran down the side of the culvert and took the soil with it.

Jim, my boss at the time, charged me with hauling rocks from the Plummer pit over to the culvert and placing them along the edges to prevent further washouts. Those might have been the best two days I spent at the county (and I know what some of you are thinking – a normal person would have taken care of the job in a single afternoon, but no. I had to load all the rocks by hand since I couldn’t get at them with the tractor and loader – so I didn’t milk the job). Suddenly, I had a personal stake in that damned culvert.

I chose each rock with care and strategically placed it to hold back anymore rain water runoff. That really didn’t seem like work at all (compared to tarring a road, which I usually ended up helping with). And it worked too. For whenever I had some downtime, and there was more than enough of that, I would find some reason to head over to Oklee – via Brooks – and I’d drive past the culvert and check on my work.

No washouts since.

Digging the patio is like that. This work is personally rewarding. Only it still seems like work. My hand is cramped from the shovel and last night my lower back was killing me.

Today, I’m refreshed and ready to dig some more.

I have about ¼ of the patio dug out and leveled (leveling it was easier than I thought it would be). The real problems are all of the tree roots I’m running into. The damned things are everywhere. Finally, I broke out the rototiller (Casey’s idea) and worked up the ground as much as I could to chew up the weeds.

But I still ran into several thick ones that were beneath the rototiller blades. Oh yeah, I ran into the propane line too. Luckily, I didn’t hit that sucker with the rototiller.

Relax, Barb. I called gopher one and waited – well, waited for awhile anyway – before digging. The REA and cable guys showed up right away and the city was there this morning, but no sign of our propane provider.

Oh well, I know where the line is now.

Actually, I thought of tapping into it and then building a little brick area around it and having it as a baking stone or natural hot spot. But I decided against it.

My original plan called for two days of digging, one for hauling gravel in, another for hauling in the sand and yet another for laying the stones. I thought I was being conservative, but I don’t know now.

Unexpected things always happen (like the discovery of the copper propane line about four inches under the ground). I never really expected there to be so much dirt. I have a huge pile already and I’m not even close to done. I figured Casey and I could load it up and haul it out to Dad’s since we have to get the gravel from there anyway, but that is time spent on something I didn’t schedule in to my time frame. And, of course, when I headed out for work this morning, I noticed that one of Casey’s truck tires is flat. Another unforeseen obstacle.

With any luck, it will be ready by Sunday.