It’s been more than a month
since I arrived in Tucson but I haven’t written a word in this journal. It
isn’t that I haven’t thought of writing, it’s just because I’ve been too busy.
For one thing, when I arrived the back yard was strewn with large, flat rocks.
The idea was that we should figure out how to arrange the rocks and create a
walkway connecting our three houses and a patio from them.
Dennis took one look at the
rocks and announced that it would take us all winter, if not longer. We immediately
decided this was a job for professionals. Luckily our neighbors recommended a
good company that gave us a reasonable bid and started the next week!
The yard had been graded,
so the crew wasn’t starting from scratch. The first day they raked and pounded
the earth with a big machine that compacted the soil. Thump, thump, thump went
on all day, shaking my bones.
Stone-laying began the next
day and by the end of two days, the two-man (and sometimes four-man) crew had
made good progress. The big house is on the left and our Casita A is on the right.
Soon the master craftsman
announced that we needed more stone. The supplement arrived the next day, joining
the sand heap and the filler* heap on our driveway.
These stones are massive,
the large ones taking two men to position them. No wonder the stone-layers wear
not only knee pads, but also trusses to protect their backs!
Layering sand as a bed,
adding each stone, trimming the stone to fit, leveling and pounding the stone
has to be done on one’s knees. Then the filler between the stones must be
added, compacted, and wet down, again on one’s knees.
In just nine days the job
was done and the happy homeowners, Grant and Blair, were sitting on our new
patio. Now we can get on with life.
*We went
to a rock merchant to buy the filler, which is a ground-up type of stone that
hardens when it is wet down. The workmen did this using a hose, but each
additional rain hardens the filler more.
Copyright
2017 by Shirley Domer
