April 1, 2017 – It took me 3 days to enlarge the cobblestone walk 2 ½ feet by 5 feet

NO - April fools!

          Surprisingly it took me hardly any time at all; it was almost a joke how quickly I accomplished it.

          A few months ago I decided to lengthen the cobblestone walk from the patio out into the back lawn for two reasons.  My husband still won’t swing to the edge of the walk when he is mowing the lawn and I have to get after him to trim the 6 inches to a foot of grass for absolutely not reason other than he doesn’t want to get too close to the cobblestone walk, or he thinks it is too difficult to maneuver. 

Make it a smoother transition between the lawn and the walk – a straight line so that he doesn’t have to swing into it and then be certain the cobblestones are absolutely even with the grass so that he doesn’t gouge the grass or nip the stone side while mowing.  

This caused me to make a line in the sand – no – a line in the lawn and assess I needed 5 more rows of cobblestones to accomplish this.

Weeks ago, I bought cobblestones and laid them out.  I also realized that the patio garden was encroaching on the east side of the walk and that the left side of the walk needed to be enlarged a row of stones to compensate, so I bought more cobblestones.  If I am fixing the cobblestone walk, I might as well fix it right.

We have had soaking rains in the last several days and it has been a wonderful situation in order to dig in the dirt – especially the hard packed clay we have here.

Thinking about it I planned on attacking the cobblestone project fresh one full morning and also thinking about having done this previously I wanted a way to do it neatly. Working neater helps in the cleanup when I have to stop suddenly.

Having moved all my garden tools from a broken down tool shed that I tossed in the dump into another shed, I realized I had not been utilizing a smaller lawn/garden edger.   I’ve tested it out on a few places these last few weeks and now it has become my favorite – lighter, different depth and sharpness – good for light work.

Early Saturday morning in the cool of the morning, I took the lawn edger and worked from the end of the cobblestone walk out into the lawn making a series of garden edger row cuts 2 inches apart to my line in the lawn.   The ground having been wet from rain the day before, the edger sunk into the clay soil like a hot knife through butter.   I then sat down on my yoga pad, now garden pad, and took my Dutch weed hook and plucked the slivers of clay out and tossed them into three-3 gallon pots.  Every three pots I got up and dumped in a flower bed that had been experiencing erosion around the roots of a bush.

I hadn’t even gotten through the large cup of coffee that was within my reach when – I was done excavating. It hadn’t been a half hour of work.  I was amazed.  Sitting back on my heels, checking the depth of my excavated project – it didn’t need much leveling up – the lightweight edger had dug the soil to exactly the right depth.  Talk about luck – WOW.

But, I had estimated that the project would take me hours and then I would need a rest and get cleaned up and then go off to Lowes to get a couple of bags of sand to finish the project the next day or the day after.

So, the April fool’s joke was on me – I was way ahead of schedule with no sand.  I called the husband over and asked, “Can you drive me up in the truck to get sand?”

“You dug that out like a groundhog,” he said as amazed as I was that it was ready for sand and we had no sand.  All the soil excavated had been carried off and the base was smooth and tamped.

So, I was muddy all over as we went to Lowe’s on a Saturday morning around 10 a.m.  It looked like everyone in the county was buying Sankret, some sort of cement.   Looking my very worst and expecting everyone I knew to see me looking like a “muddy groundhog” I grabbed a blue trolley, rolled it down to the sand and plunked two 50-pound bags on the trolley.  Looking at the price I noticed they were $1 off a bag so I grabbed a third bag to keep on hand. What I found even more amazing – I tossed those 50 pound bags of sand around like they were a bed pillows.  Where did this strength come from?  I need it every day.

We actually got in and out of Lowe’s and back to the project in less than an hour.

Now as I think back, if I had had the sand as well as the blocks I bet it would have taken me two days to accomplish the project.

When I got done and was watering sand into the cobblestone cracks I called my husband over, “So, how’s it look?” I asked.

“You always do a good job.”  He assessed, happy he didn’t have do anything other than chauffer the truck to get the sand, then fix a fresh pot of coffee and bring a fresh cup out to me on the sand part of the project.

He turned and eyed the section between the ‘Dish” vegetable garden and the back of the house that needed attention. 

He said, “Maybe we need to do that whole area in cobblestone.”

“I’ll see how much a pallet of cobblestones cost.” I answered excited.

Maybe that was my April fool’s joke?