The Summer of Oh-Oh Nine

What can be said about the summer of Oh-Oh Nine? Enough rain to make Vancouver jealous, and little time to get out and work on projects.

It rained:


And then the sun came out:


And we could count the nice sunsets on one hand:


The observant among you will note that our farmer across the road didn't even have time to finish mowing the hay on his field in one fell swoop before more rain came.

The rain hindered us in more ways that one.

(Even Cooper looks despondent).

Between rain showers, we worked on the slate patio that is still not done. We just ordered the last tiles we need to complete the job. It's not that we calculated badly, it's that we had about 30 tiles that were either split or almost unusable due to their poor quality. The good news is the company is replacing them free of charge, and the bonus is that we get to keep the old tiles because it would cost too much to return them. We can still make use of some of them as stepping stones, or in between garden beds (but don't even get me going on that...).

Our cedars really liked the wetness, but our strawberries not so much. Most of them rotted away before they even ripened. The ones that ripened tasted of water. It was not a stellar year.

All this rain made it hard to even take out the tractor and mow the grass. Heavy tractors and clay soils don't mix very well. I think Eric managed to get the job done maybe 4 times over the course of the summer. Our property looks like it needs a good weed-whacking, stat!

We added someone to our menagerie. Meet Plumette:

That's Plume-ette, not Plum-ette, because her tail is like a plume. Yup, she's missing a chunk out of her ear. She's super affectionate and was abandoned, until she met us, that is. We obviously have SUCKER printed on our foreheads, both Eric and I. And yes, cats sit on tables at our house. It's not encouraged, but it's also not completely frowned upon either, as evidenced above. Plumette was very pregnant when the above photo was taken, but her full story is for another post. That and many kitten photos...

Patio Building Update

Ahhhh, yes. What a day. We're still married, no one threw any tools, and cursing was kept to a bare minimum. We managed to put down exactly 21 tiles in about 5 hours, which means if we keep up the pace, we can finish in 2 more days. And that is just the pathway to the front door and does not include the patio which we will finish next Spring. I don't even want to think about the patio right now, truth be told.

The problem with the tiles: not one has a smooth surface. Some are off by a quarter to a half inch over their length. Some are convex, some are concave, all have some type of imperfection that makes them hard to place. And this is Grade A slate:


As Eric put each tile into place and shimmed them into submission, I gauged the thickness of the edge, put on my spare biceps and pulled out what I thought to be the corresponding tile from the pallet shown above. They weigh about 4o to 50 pounds each and are a bit cumbersome and hard to move and place. We then placed my best choice down, flipping it end to end and over to find its best fit. Then we lifted the tile, and smoothed or added screening as necessary. Repeat about 10 times per tile, and we're satisfied.

We used a spackling knife, a piece of wood and our "motivator", commonly known as a hammer. (Actually, it is a carver's mallet we purchased at Lee Valley, and it is one of our favorite tools.) Eric also needed to ensure that 1) his first tile was straight, and 2) the level was correct. All of this was what the Québecois colloquially refer to as "gossage", a nice all-around word that means fiddly, nit-picking, detail-oriented work.


Both of us have so much mud on the soles of our shoes, every time Eric asks me to go in the house, I cringe because I hate removing my workboots but with our mud-caked boots we don't really have the choice. I sound like a drill seargent before we work out side: measuring tape, check, level, check, Olfa knife, check...anything to avoid me from having to remove my shoes 10 times before we're organized.

At the end of the day, we managed to put down 21 tiles, or 42 square feet. By the time we had found our rythym we were getting tired, so let's hope that tomorrow we have a bit more "oomph" and can get even more done.

Once again, we were rewarded with a fabulous sunset:

Somehow, it sort of makes all the hard work worthwhile.

I almost hesitate to post the photo below since it doesn't really do any justice, but there it is anyway. The crappy steps that lead down to the slate will be done in slate too, but they will only be delivered next spring. We will have 3 steps, 16" wide and 96" long leading down to this path, and we haven't really figured out the full details, so stay tuned. When I said we were making this all up as we go along, I wasn't joking.

All told, we are happy with the result. It's nice when a project lives up to your expectations.

Patio Building Exploits

The sun is out and the weather gurus have forecast a high of 17C, or about 65F today. That means we will start to put down the slate tiles for the pathway to our front door. The slate we ordered to build our patio and walkway, as well as the roofing tiles for our new entrance (more about that later...) arrived about 2 weeks ago. We thought about storing the pallets until next Spring, but really, we'd love to get the job done before winter sets in.

The weather is lovely today, compared to yesterday where we froze our nubs off, and Eric still has 2 days off before going back to work, so we figured we might as well give at least the pathway a go.

We had built the base for the patio and walkway in September, excavating the clay to an approximated depth of 12" to 16", lining the base with a geo-textile membrane, and back-filling with 3/4" gravel. Our first mistake: we were told to use 3/4" gravel for optimal drainage, however, we should have used 0-3/4" instead. We discovered this when we added the gravel screening on top and compacted it using a compactor. Had we used o-3/4" gravel, we would have used less screening, now we have to keep our fingers crossed that the screening won't just disappear into the gravel over the next few years. Once these tiles are down, we hope they stay flat. We don't want to take them up again because the prepared surface might heave with repeated freezing and thawing cycles.

So Eric got 2 trailers of screening that we off-loaded onto tarps. This keeps things tidier and makes it easier to move using the front-loader. No scooping up chunks of grass and earth at the same time. We added about a 1" to 2" layer of screening on top of the gravel (which Eric compacted using a rented compactor below), and yours truly went mad with a rake, smoothing and straightening the surface under Eric's eagle-eye. Eric then compacted this screening, and we now have a lovely, smooth base ready for the tiles which are shrink-wrapped on the skids in the picture below.


Notice the geo-textile membrane. We are folding the edge under the tiles as we go, and we hope that the membrane will keep the compacted screening from shifting a bit. Can you tell we're just making this up as we go along? (And can you tell someone gave us the membrane, and we figured: we might as well put it to use!)

Next step is to place the tiles: they are 12" x 24" and are so heavy, I can't even take one off the pallet. They are placed in specially-made boxes on a regular pallet frame, and for the life of me, I can't even lift one out of the box. Eric is going to have a bit of fun today, I think! One bug with the tiles is that they aren't all the same thickness, there can be a variation of about 1/4" from one end of the tile to another, so I think we are going to curse a bit when we put these into place!

If I make it through today, I'll let you know how things turn out!