Front Walk Tune-Up

Sometime earlier this week (I think it was), Mama asked me if I thought that I could re-work the area up to the front door. You must admit...it needed it:

(I had already gotten started before I remembered to get the camera.)

This morning, Daddy reminded me and so, after writing a letter with my morning tea, I set to work. That edger in the above picture worked fantastically as a pry bar. Thankfully, it wasn't necessary to use it on each of the stones.  

At some point during the collection and stacking of the stones, a mama Robin flew up and sat upon her nest up on the light fixture by the front door. There she stayed until Katherine opened the door quite a bit later.

Once I got the stones stacked neatly on the steps, I was ready for the next step--which meant defining the edges of the area a little and either pulling or scraping the weeds out.

A pre-shot...

Anyway, once I got done with that, I tramped off to get the sand out of the barn. There were two bags of the stuff (one partially used) and I used both of them. I carried the first one all the way from the barn (along with the square pointed shovel which wasn't necessarily smart), but took my mother's wise advice of using the go-buggy for the second one. The complete bag weighed 60 pounds. I suspect the other one was about 45-50 pounds. I think my already stiff shoulder muscles are going to be worse tomorrow. ;}

Due to the atmospherics in the barn, both bags had set up fairly solid (this is a concrete sand mix), so I took that shovel and beat the daylights out of the stuff. I was unable to totally smash it back into sand particles, but I did a good enough job to do what I wanted to with it.

Something about the perspective of this pictures is weird...

Leveled out as well I was going to get it.

By this point, Mama had finished what she was doing in the garden and was pulling weeds around the driveway. While I was finishing up with the sand, she went into the attic and brought down cardboard boxes--for this:

Once Mama helped me lay out the plastic, she went into to make lunch.

I started re-laying the stones and after a bit someone arrived to take pictures. :)

This is one of those classic pictures that remind me of the days when I was rather small and Mama would get onto my for always wearing out the knees of my pants. (Apparently, I did a lot of crawling about when I could have used my feet instead.)

I dunno...is that a Rooster face?

Job done. Now all we need is to repaint the front door....

There is still an element of "wave" to the stones, but at least it is better and there is no grass and flowers growing through the them! 

Now...this afternoon I am going to try to finish up weeding the strawberries. I worked on them yesterday and still didn't get finished. I think I should be able to manage it without too much trouble...

     Racheal