Jarrett House North

Well, the Great Bricklaying Experiment continues. Yesterday’s work was mostly rained out. We completed most of the other projects, including bricking out a new bed under the cherry tree where the grass has stopped growing and getting landscaping ties in the front of the bed by the street. We did run into a few snags, though. There’s about a two foot gap at the end of the last tie that we’d like to fill with part of another tie, and a six-foot length along the bottom of the driveway that would happily accept the remnants of an eight-foot landscape tie with two feet cut off. The catch is that I don’t have a saw that’s powerful or long enough to cut landscape ties. Maybe my neighbor’s table saw?

Anyway, I think I’ll have to continue to lay bricks between now and kingdom come. Pictures as there is something photo-worthy.

A slightly sleepless night later (note to self: hamburger perhaps not the best thing to eat on a slightly acid stomach, even if homemade) and we awaken to the phone ringing downstairs. Lisa says, “I’d better turn on the upstairs ringer; we don’t want to miss the delivery call.” Then I hear a rumble from outside the window. I peek out and there’s a flatbed trailer parked across the street, with a pallet of bricks and landscaping ties atop it. I scramble into clothes and across the street and guide the forklift until he manages to push the pallet into the left stall of our garage (Lisa having volunteered to put her car outside until we can get the stuff all in place).

Yes, it’s a holiday here at Jarrett House North. The plan was to take off a day to get everything in place for our new bricked walks and garden beds. And of course it’s raining. Ah well.

…why Ignatz Mouse always stole his bricks, or bought them on credit, from Kolin Kelly the brickmaker in Krazy Kat. The damned things are pricey. They would have been pricier, except we found that “patio bricks” (in the building materials section, not the garden section) were more than ten cents a brick cheaper.

The bricks, as well as some landscape ties (why do they come in eight-foot lengths? That’s two feet longer than can fit in my car even with the back seat down), will be delivered tomorrow. So that left us with a light day, right? Heh. After four hours digging up the front beds, weeding, planting new plants, trimming the sidewalk, putting weedblocking cloth down, and digging the outline of a new bed in the side yard, I think that’s all the “light day” I can take.

(Incidentally, I almost wrote “Colin Creevey” in the first paragraph. Which leads to the amusing mental picture of Ignatz Mouse beaning Harry Potter with a brick, while Colin madly takes pictures of a confused Krazy Kat. Crossovers are so scary.)

Bright and sunny here this morning. I know it won’t last but I’m enjoying it now. Tomorrow we’ll start our first major outdoor projects, replacing some of the old bare muddy bark paths in the garden with brick and laying a new bed under the cherry tree, where all the grass is being replaced by weeds. Today, though, I have a monster of a cold. Vitamin C and eight hours in front of a computer should help.