We Interrupt this Saturday for...

Saturday is a work day at our house. It's our get it done day so that on Sunday we can rest and enjoy the fruits of our labor. It's how we roll. This time of year you will find us out working in the gardens, bright and early, at the break of dawn. Saturday mornings in our gardens are magical!

I LOVE the feeling of working hard side by side with my Honeyman.

It is pure joy for me.

I've been dreaming about our project all week long. Today is the day we are going to finish it. Can you feel my exhaleration?  I jumped out of my bed and ran to the window to greet my day. 

Oh, no! 

Not today! 

Not on SATURDAY!

This is what I woke up to... 

SNOW in my gardens.

But I've got work to do! (Big sigh.)

In my heart I really do equate garden work with sheer pleasure.

Disappointed doesn't even begin to express how I feel.

I decided to make the most of it and take some pics to feed the blog.

It is quite beautiful out there.

Sorry trusty wheelbarrow... not today.

Looks like I won't be cleaning the fountain either.

The Japanese Maple leaves don't seem to mind the snow.

Nor do the Eastern Redbuds that are about to bloom.

I did NOT Photoshop this blue blue sky.
Amazing! It was the last pic I took and the sun lit up the scene.

Unfurling leaves seem undeterred.

And the mock orange seems to delight in her new "do".

The robins are still singing their morning song.

They're going to miss the entertainment we provide.

The hostas are still doing their thing...

and the tulips are happy for the warm blanket of snow.  

(The air is 26°)

 

 Crazy Beautiful! 

The winds that brought the storm got these petals all mixed up.

♦    ♦    ♦

I look up from my keyboard to see the view from my window...

Oh! 

Happy Happy!

JOY JOY!

It's melting, it's melting!

We can work out there after all!

 (Groans are heard in the not so far distance.)

Apparently not everyone shares my love of Saturdays in the gardens.

We'll have to work on that.

Stay tuned for Part Two of Our DIY Flagstone Patio... Filling in the Gaps

A Giant Puzzle: Part Two of our DIY Flagstone Patio

This is the second in a series of how we (as in my Honeyman, a few of my kids and myself) built our beautiful Flagstone Patio.

I've always enjoyed the challenge of a good puzzle. This phase of our Flagstone Patio was the ultimate puzzle experience. With the foundation superbly in place, read about that experience here, and four tons of flagstone to choose from, we were ready for the next step.

Laying the Stone

Having never done this before, we were on a high learning curve.
At first it really was like assembling a puzzle. We'd lay out stones on the grass and in the flower beds to view the shapes so that we could find the perfect piece for the space.  

"I'm looking for an obtuse triangle" someone would shout out.  

"Got one! Try this." 

"Alabama... do you see one shaped like Alabama?"

 It really was like a game.

 

You can imagine using this method took a lot of time and eyes to find the perfect stone for each space.

Ace helper adjusting his tunes

As we began the second half of the patio and there weren't as many stones to choose from, it became harder and harder to find the perfect stone. It was evident that we would have to cut the stones to alter their shape.

We tried the chisel method of scoring the stone, using a hammer and chisel on the scored line to break the stone where it needed to be altered. This worked... sometimes, but was essentially a frustrating experience when the stone broke the wrong way, which happened often. There had to be better way. 

Keep in mind that we could have bought pavers with nice uniform edges that fit together perfectly.  But that was not the look we were going for. We wanted a stone patio that looked not so formal... a little more country.

What to do, what to do...

Fortunately I married a smart man, and what he doesn't know, he figures out. Out comes the circular skill saw and after purchasing a masonry blade, we were in business once again. We now had the ability to make the stone fit the space.  Not wanting perfectly squared edges, he would lightly tap with a hammer after using the saw to make the edges look more natural. 

After the stones were all in place, we needed to make the surface  level from stone to stone. My Honeyman used a 2x4 to spot the areas that needed adjustment and a level to level the surface of the stones, carefully lifting up each stone and raising or lowering the sand as needed. This took a whole lot of time, but it was essential to our desired outcome of near perfection. :)


Up next... Filling in the Gaps.  Stay tuned!

I Believe...

Pause...  
           Reflect...       
                        and Rejoice!

for He is Risen.

May you feel the love of our Savior 
on this beautiful Easter Sunday.
He lives! 
And is always there 
to grant us peace and comfort and direction.

This I believe.

Up Next... Part Two of Building a Flagstone Patio.

DIY Flagstone Patio... Preparing the Foundation

My Honeyman is the bombdiggity. Whatever I can dream... he can build.  Right now we are in the middle of building a beautiful...  oh, but wait... that's another day's post that you'll just have to wait for.  Today we are sharing Part One of how we built our gorgeous FLAGSTONE PATIO... totally by ourselves. Why pay someone else to do what we can do together as a family? Family Projects give us an opportunity to work together shoulder to shoulder. Together we learn valuable attributes such as patience and respect for each other and staying with a job until it's finally done. And when our project is completed, together we feel the exhilaration of building something beautiful. These are the ties that bind us into a Forever Family.

Here is Part One: Preparing the Foundation
written by (drumroll please)...  My Honeyman:

"As with most of our DIY projects, the planning, preparation and purchasing activities took a good deal of time, but were critical to the beauty of the resulting patio. For those eager to start building your patio, don't be tempted to rush ahead here!

Important considerations we first needed to address:

•    Where to locate the patio? We had already decided this long ago, reserving a space for the patio in our master plan.

•    How large should it be? Smaller would have been easier and less expensive, but we wanted a place to live outdoors and entertain, and so needed some substantial space. We ultimately laid 750 square feet of flagstone, requiring about 4 tons of 2 inch thick flagstone.

•    Shape? We love sweeping curves in our garden, but a square patio may fit your landscape just as well. 

♦   ♦   ♦

With the answers to these questions in hand, it was time to prepare the foundation. This involved creating the proper grade, outlining the shape with bender board, covering the ground with weed barrier, and then leveling it with sand.

•    Preparing the slope of the subsoil is CRUCIAL! It must slope slightly away from the house in order to provide proper drainage. A square-mouth shovel and lots of patience will be required to get it right.

•    We then outlined the space with ½ inch by 4 inch composite bender board, securing it temporarily in place with wooden stakes that were removed as the stones were laid.  (The small rolls of edging from the big box stores will not give you the results you want; check with sprinkler supply stores for the more professional materials.)

•    We next rolled out weed barrier fabric across all the exposed soil. We actually divided the project into sections for this phase of the construction.

•    Finally, we spread a 1 and 1/2 inch layer of masonry sand over the weed barrier. The more level you can get this layer, the easier it will be to level the flagstone later. Tip: we first laid lengths of plastic pipe in parallel every 3 feet or so, then spread the sand between the pipe using a shovel. A length of lumber was then used to scrape or screed the sand. Once the sand was level between pipes, we carefully removed the pipes to continue the process elsewhere. Just ignore the impressions where the pipes were removed—they won’t matter once the stones are placed."

Well said, Dear! Now a few pics and my color commentary:

The morning our sand and stone arrived was a perfect day. I was apprehensive that the bobcat could carry those heavy pallets across my lawn without causing major damage, but it all worked out. Two tons of sand and four tons of stone.

The bobcat did leave his tracks in my Honeyman's well prepared and leveled surface, but that would be a quick fix. With the sand's arrival he was anxious to try his PVC pipe idea to aid in the leveling of the sand, so he got right to it.  It worked like a dream!

*Notice the small concrete pad laid by the contractor when the house was built... their idea of a patio. We just worked over this.

Actually HE works like a dream... still chugging after all these years.

At this point my job was to add color to the grounds to keep his work space gorgeous... keep in mind it was June and I had no intention of letting everything else slide while we installed our Patio.  This was still planting time in our zone 5 gardens and I had lots to do. Each of our eight children and our grandchildren would be home in August and our plan was to have a family picture taken in the gardens... so everything needed to be perfect.


Next post... Laying the Stone. This was challenging and labor intensive, and we all took part in this phase. Think of a giant puzzle to assemble!

You've Got to Have A Dream...

Remember the words to the song... 

♪ ♫ You've got to have a dream, if you don't have a dream... how you gonna make a dream come true? ♫ ♪

This is how we have built our beautiful landscape.  

One dream at a time.

For six years we dreamed of a beautiful Flagstone Patio where we could sit back and enjoy the beautiful landscape we had created. It was an essential piece of our Master Plan. We landscaped all around the spot where it would be, leaving it a blank canvas to be painted when our budget could afford it. We covered it with mulch and referred to it as our Someday Patio.

Ideally this feature would have gone in before the grass and flowers and trees. But sometimes you have to pick and choose your projects according to your budget. So we waited...


And then someday became a reality...

Our Someday Patio... a dream come true!

It was a labor of love working side by side with my dear husband and children. We designed the plan and then worked together to bring our plan to life. And now we enjoy the fruits of our labor!

Yes, I touched everyone of those stones... more than once!

It was like putting together a giant puzzle... stone by stone.

Come join me for the next several posts and we'll share how we created this beautiful patio by ourselves... if we can do this, surely you can too!

 

Be Still and Know That I Am God

These little tulips have been waiting patiently to bloom.

When they finally open, they will be the first blooms 

of the year in our gardens.

I first noticed them emerging from the soil weeks ago. 

Then, last Sunday, after three glorious days of 70° temperatures,

the color popped.

Then came the snow, 

then sun,

then snow, 

and more snow,

then a few tiny rays of sunshine...

and now snow again.

So longing for those petals to open and to bask in the light of the warming sun.

A voice whispers in my heart:

Patience my dear child.

"Be still and know that I am God." Psalm 46

All things bloom on his timetable.

He is the keeper of the gardens.

I must remember that.

SPRING?

Spring?

The Miracle of Sunshine

Two days of 70's!
Amazing what a little warm sunshine can do for the soul....

and for the trees!

but this morning...

North view from my Gardens

we're back to Winter Whites. 

But the emerging leaves don't seem to mind.

Hey! This Tulip wasn't red yesterday morning.

Ahhh... You gotta love SPRING in Utah.