I got so much work done yesterday on my new patio. I don’t think that is an interesting sentence to begin a journal entry, but I can’t help but be excited about how my landscaping is finally coming together. Candyce is out of town, and the summer is heating up, so it’s time to work hard and get the landscaping done while I still can.

I woke up at six on Saturday morning and got right to work. I leveled and packed 250 square feet of sand, and then laid bricks on top. It was a brutal day of work, but after ten hours, I was so proud of my progress. I couldn’t believe I got so much on one day.

I slept in on Sunday because my body was too tired to start early again. I finally slipped on my work gloves at 10:30 AM, and I just couldn’t motivate myself to start working. I just stood in my yard and stared at the unfinished brick patio. Basically, the bricks that make the swooping edge of the patio were not even, and I didn’t know how I was going to fix that. I wondered if I had laid down a crappy foundation.

So I ignored that problem and built up my confidence with the small task of sweeping sand into the cracks in between the bricks. That got me moving, and I just kept going for the next ten hours. I put in a few hours to fix the edge, and then everything started to magically come together–almost like making a jig saw puzzle. It was so exciting to see what was once in my head now beneath my feet. So cool!

I moved ten wheel barrow’s full of sand off my driveway, finally giving myself my parking space back. That pile of sand used to be five feet tall and fifteen feet wide. Now it’s all gone! It was such a pleasure to back my car back into the parking spot.

I finished the night by doing what my dad always did when I was a kid–I walked around and looked at my work for an hour. I love it!

:::

Now that my landscaping is cleaning up, I’ve started to plan out all the lighting. Pretty soon this is going to be quite a party pad.