Who wants to volunteer?

(Ye olde patio.)

The special (heh) delivery arrived yesterday afternoon and work on the new project will begin any minute now (or once the rain stops).  The old patio, pictured above, has to be taken apart first.  The patio isn’t old in terms of age.  M built that a summer or two after we moved into this house (which was in 2002).  The bricks were once part of the kitchen that we gutted and had remodeled.  Their sole purpose (besides taking up a good amount of space) was to house a “built-in” oven.  It probably looked pretty cool when it was new but it was outdated when we bought the house and that space is now occupied with cabinets and shelves, a much more efficient use if you ask me.  And we got a patio out of it.

(The Stuff.)

M took a masonry course last fall to get ready for this project.  Hopefully he now knows what he’s doing.  I should take that “hopefully” out.  I have great faith in him, especially when it comes to these marriage-testing projects.  From first glance, I’d say the thing we’ll need the most help with will be moving and placing the flagstones (you can see those sitting to the right of the cinder blocks).  All volunteers are welcome.  Feel free to sign up in the comments section of this post.  😉

What you don’t see in either picture are the rocks (mini-boulders) I bought for my garden.  There really aren’t that many of them but they will take a little work to haul up to the garden.  Once we realized how cheap they were, M and I both later thought that we should have bought more as I will likely need more for the garden and any leftovers can be used to line flowerbeds around the house or something.  We can always find a use for them.

The guy that delivered the goods was kind enough to bring his truck around to the back so we won’t have to spend the next week hauling bricks, mortar, etc.  Three cheers for the delivery dude!

I’ll leave you with a pretty picture.  Enjoy.

Garden notes:  We’re getting some much needed rain today.  Supposed to keep raining for the next few days.  Did some chipping and shredding this afternoon, adding to our large pile of mulch.  I was hoping to harvest some asparagus but it’s still not ready.  Might be able to get about 6-8 spears tomorrow.

The trees are finally bursting out with leaves.  The apple and crabapple trees are blooming.  The azaleas and lilac buds are about to pop.