The Hardest Part

 

That pretty much sums me up.  Last Wednesday was one of those 'amazing' days, and today is shaping up to be pretty darned good too.  Don't ask me about yesterday.

We have problems in our garden with dirty water flowing back in to the pool.  We love that we have a larger patio area, but why someone would brick it with a slope IN to the pool area, I've no idea.  Because that means any time the patio gets water on it or is hosed down or the pool is cleaned, the filth collected in between the paving blocks gets loosened and flows straight in to our pool.

The solution, we decided, was to take up a line of paving blocks around the pool area at the bottom of the slope and put down stones instead, which would allow water run-off to drain.  Technically I think we require the landlords permission, but after three attempts through the realtor and still no response, I decided today was the day to just go ahead and tackle it.  Or last Wednesday was that day.

So first step was to look up YouTube and work out how to lift a block paver.  Needless to say I didn't have any of the right basic tools, but a screwdriver, a hammer, a pair of garden shears, some rubber gloves, a lot of enthusiasm from the boys and sheer determination from me, seemed to work just as well.  To be honest I'd tackled that first corner block, the one which looked 'loosest', for about half an hour and was about to give up and call Census, our local property management people that come to fix things when they stop working (which you pay a fortune for and still they're useless, but that's another post for another day), to see whether they'd do it, but then we had a breakthrough.  About an hour later and we'd managed to remove the rest of the blocks.  This was all before 9am, with Joey and me still in our pyjamas.  Oh the things you can get done when your husband takes your older children to school and they leave the house at 7.15am!

Since, like in Texas, most shops don't open here till 10am (GRRRR!!  WHY?????) we all had time for a wash before heading to Ace for the stones.  Looks pretty good, even if I do say so myself!

This morning it was time to tackle the rest of it, which I did debate about doing at all.  But we did it, a lot quicker and with more finesse than last time, but with just as much dust and dirt.

The three bags of Scottish Tweed Pebbles are still in the back of the car waiting for the Don to get home and bring round the back (a nice man from Ace did all the heaving lifting for me at that side - the joys of a service culture).  I did carry and empty the first three bags last week, but quite frankly that was enough.  I feel I've done my bit...  Plus, I'm now clean.