We setup a small tree this year for the holidays in our family room, and it turned out to be a cheerful addition for the holidays. Those with astute eyes may recognize the "major award" in the box under the tree. :-)
Well it took a bit of time to install (and even more time to post), but we got our bluestone pavers all in place. It wasn't easy as the shapes were mostly rectilinear, so we had to conjure up some old Tetris skills (see Dad, I told you Nintendo was good for us!). We were able to lay out a design that would blend the large stones with the small, yet have the durability to last.
We started by "cascading" the largest pavers in the high-traffic area of the back yard, near the rear stairs. These large stones are roughly 3 x 4, and quite hefty! But by offsetting each by about 6" or so, the pattern creates an optical curve from the gate towards the back yard.
We then had to reserve some large 2' x 4' stones for the walkway that connects our garage to the patio.
The pavers are not grouted or set in concrete, but instead the joints are filled with sand and stone dust. This permeable paving allows for stormwater to drain through the paved area more naturally, instead of diverting all the water to the edges of the patio. It also will be more tolerant of any movement due to freeze/thaw cycles during winter.
The colors of the bluestone pavers are a muted in these photographs of the completed job area due to the final layer of stone dust. After winter, we'll likely do a light powerwash to remain any residual surface grime. In any case, here is the completed work:
Everything wrapped up pretty nicely, and we even have a pile of remnants we may do something artistic with next year. For the time being though, we had about one nice day that we got to enjoy our patio before the weather started to really cool down. After the winter snows freeze and thaw, hopefully there will be little movement between the pavers.
It has been such a lovely warm autumn, and the leaves falling from our maple tree have done a great job adding color to our little spookhouse. Due to digging out the back yard for a patio, we've got quite the graveyard out front. And the pirate flag we bought a few years ago and recently re-discovered in the basement looks pretty wicked cool waving in the wind.
On Halloween night we ended up running out of candy twice, saved once by a friend's arrival and the second time by me running to CVS. We only give out once piece of candy to each child (or adult, yeah, we get a LOT of adults, kind of strange) and so we ended up handing out over 1,000 pieces of candy. I wish I were kidding. However, we do start at 3:30 and go straight till 7pm, so that's 1,000+ trick or treaters over the course of 3 and half hours. Yeah, it's still a lot!
This year was also the last party we're throwing for a while - I've sworn to take a one-year hiatus in 2010 from hosting anything, so we did have a lot of help to handle the trick or treaters. L to R: Jerry reprised his role as the Grim Reaper statue for the third year in a row; Sara and Orrin came dressed as ... Sara and Orrin; Frank dressed up as the Friendly Neighborhood Werewolf (his wife Wendy was Lil Red Riding Hood), Jason took over Mark's previous role as The Demented Zombie Pet Malcom, and Scott was Skeleton Man. Not pictured: JC as the Red Fairy Princess, Julie as Renaissance Faire Maiden, and myself as the Wicked Witch.
All in all, lots of fun. Next year Halloween falls on a Sunday, and I'm expecting that will mean leaner crowds - which will go well with my intention to scale back the madness. Then again, I may be so ready to go all out after ten months of downtime! We'll just have to see ...
Humphrey-house has been a bit of a mud pit for the last... oh five weeks or so, as we tore out the old concrete in the backyard and are putting in reclaimed bluestone pavers. It seems like years already. There has been a lot of digging, excavating, pain killers - and then - more digging. It's all a necessary evil as we prepare for a 4-inch base of gravel and 1-2 inch of sand under the pavers.
Given the small urban lot, we quickly ran into a problem though. What do we we do with all of that dirt? We had to creative. Fortunately, some landscape design wishes and our favorite holiday came in to save the day.
Ideas for Extra Dirt:
1) Create a landscape planter!
We always thought a nice raised planter bed with wide rails in front of our rear porch would be a great landscape feature. It would make gardening a bit easier, and also provide extra sitting room outside. If only we had enough dirt to fill it though... a-ha! Problem solved! Sadly, while this turned out great (and I will post about the construction later), this ended up taking only a few loads of dirt in the wheelbarrow, so other dirt solutions were needed.
2) Raise those flower beds!
We have a "peripheral" planting area that surrounds the yard. In the past, it's been unofficially defined as the line where we can't get the few blades of grass in the yard to grow further. Now, with several wheelbarrows (20+) of roto-tilled soil, we have sleek looking berms surronding the yard. The berms give a lot of depth and texture to the small space! Bonus: concrete chunks can be reused as a nice little "rock garden".
3) Make graves!
This was honestly the most fun way to place the extra dirt. We normally have a cemetery in the front yard at Halloween. but this year it got more interesting and authentic as we created fresh graves for the tombstones. Mwah -ha -ha!
Even after these efforts, we still have a fairly hefty mound we will need to deal with. Some will be used to back-fill in dirt around the edges of the patio, but we may have to craigslist it, or build a semi-raised planter for next year's veggie garden. In the meantime, we're ready to climb out of the mud and onto a patio!
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