Finishing the path

Last fall we had a whirlwind effort to get our brick path in before the snow flew. It stretched from the front of the house, all along the side, and right back to the chicken coop and garage. But we didn't have time to do that little bit that comes from the sidewalk to the house.



It was on our to-do list all summer, and, like many projects around here, I just didn't think it would get done this year. But I kept telling Jeremy that it surely wouldn't take that long. =)

Finally one day Jeremy got out some tools and started digging up that (pathetic) pathway. The concrete was so thin he just had to bang on it with the crowbar a bit and it broke into lots of pieces.





We (mostly Jeremy) got the slabs of concrete up and moved to the back and we thought we were done. But then Jeremy brought out the shovel to start digging and hit concrete! There was a whole extra layer of concrete about 1/2 inch under the dirt for about half of the path. I don't know what people were doing or thinking way back when these layers went down...

Anyway, we now have a lot more concrete stacked up which we'll use to finish our terrace next spring/summer. For now it's just stacked on the back side of the terrace, in two layers of course.




The path was "in process" for about a week or so and getting in and out of the house was very interesting.



But finally Jeremy started putting rock down...



...and laying the brick!



It's done now and fabulous. Wonderful to see and much easier to shovel!




One part of this that was enjoyable (now that it has passed) was sifting out the rock. A friend had given us a large load of rock just as we moved in 1 1/2 years ago. The stuff sat by the fence all that time - Jeremy didn't really want to use it in the path with all the dirt there was in it. But there was nothing else to do with it and we can't really afford to buy a whole new load of rock.

The pile of rock happened to be in the newly expanded chicken run (more on that later!). So Jeremy and I painstakingly sifted out all the rock while the chickens milled around us looking for bugs and worms and creepy crawly things as they were sifted out of the rock. The chickens certainly had a blast and I think they're a little sad that we're not out there helping them dig up tasty morsels every day!