New Katsura

Yesterday was a chilly day, in the low 60s. Overnight was in the low 40s! Very fall-like.

Bartlett planted the new katsura tree. It is a huge specimen, single trunk, full and tall. Mike knocked $300 from the price, so it was at least close to my budgeted range, but still an incredibly expensive investment.

But after two tries and five years invested in the katsuras I had planted myself, I was ready to spring for this major cost and get a tree that looks like it had been there five years already.

It took three men and heavy equipment to plant it. It might require staking, as the canopy is so full and so high on the trunk. It's a good 16 feet tall.

The passengers flying overhead from Boston to NY looked down and approved. Nice tree.

It Came Out Great

Although yesterday started out misty and damp, it ended in dry, cool sunshine. Exactly 72 degrees.

And although the day started out with much to do on the stone wall, it ended with a finished wall. It came out great.

Three bags of mulch were spread about over the dirt behind the wall, and it looks good.

I transplanted some of the struggling lambsear from its shadier, wet spot along the west walk, and put it at the left corner. I hope in this drier, sunnier corner it will spread and do well.

I moved the little cast iron nymph sitting astride a turtle and put her at the top of the wall. I think she is more visible here.

I'm still not happy with the way the right side ends. It only needs a little adjusting -- either I should stair-step the end or try to make a straight vertical end, but this isn't quite right. Minor adjustment.

And I'm not happy with the steep drop off on the left side either, but don't have any ideas to fix that.

The heart needs to be glued with the stone adhesive that Jim got me. We never did mix up any mortar, just backfilled with dirt and topped with mulch. It's not wobbly, but I don't know how it will all hold up to freezes and thaws and ice. I may have to rebuild next spring.

Meanwhile, it looks great.

Cap Stones

Yesterday the relentless gray damp ended and we had a dry, sunny, beautiful late summer day, in the 70s. A perfect day, especially in the midst of so much gloomy weather lately.

Now this morning it is back to spitting mist and leaden skies.

While it was so nice yesterday Jim and I backfilled the wall (haul dirt, shovel dirt, schlep dirt), and then I started to add the capstones.

They are just sitting loosely, to get the idea, but it doesn't look right. I made this photo black & white to highlight form, and I can clearly see the left side rises, with stones on top that are too lumpy and add too  much height.

The guy at the stone store had said to save the big stones to cap the wall, but the big stones we have remaining are too thick. Gotta fix that. Maybe just take off all the top layer from the heart leftward.

I do love how the heart shows up so well.

I'll fuss with those capstones on the left today in the misty wet and see what can be done. We are so near finishing! I wish there were suitable flatter, thinner stones to put on top, but only large lumpy stones or smaller chunky rocks remain.

I'll transplant some of the lambsear to the top of the wall on the left side to echo the blue gray of the spruce. That will look nice.

And Now I Rest

Another damp, cloudy day, humid and in the high 70s. Unpleasantly buggy today after all the rain.

I am anxious in this cool(ish) weather to finish the stone wall, but we need to wait for things to dry out before doing any mortar work or back filling with soil. Everything is still pretty wet.

So, a day off.

I've been at it for at least a few hours each day for a full week now. Time to stop and smell the roses.

Or the clematis.

I really like the sweet autumn clematis on the deck railing. In fact, I love it. It may not stay so neat in future years. I may have to do a lot of pruning to control it, but for this first season it's stunning, and smells divine.

There are other beautiful sights to behold in the late summer garden. The caryopteris and the pink fall anemone are both alive with buzzing bees, and they look jewel-like even in overcast gray light.

The Rose of Sharon is really in bloom now. I was so excited to see it finally through the new taller windows of the porch -- and it just keeps getting better as summer wanes.

The Birch Garden has color. The little Drift red rose has rebloomed, and zinnias and flowering tobacco are pretty, with purple Blue Chip dwarf butterfly bush plants below them.

I have not been impressed with the Blushing Susie thunbergia vines this year. They just don't have much in the way of flowers. A few here and there, and they are pale. Only in the last week have there been more than a half dozen tiny flowers scattered about.

But the individual flowers, isolated in a close up, are sweet.

It's good to have the rest today from the demanding stone work. I am not as frustrated any more, I can see how the finished wall will look and I know we can get there. The quiet time sitting on the porch in the cool damp weather is a relief.

Mmmm, the spicy scent of sweet autumn clematis!

Getting There . . .

Another stormy humid day, with drizzle in the morning but thunderstorms at noon that sent me inside. We got three quarters of an inch of rain from the passing storm. That's an inch between yesterday and today!

Before the storm rolled in I got more stone work done. It's going better. I'm getting there. I'm starting to like what I see.

I moved the heart, but the stone right next to it looks funny. The edge is broken and it distracts from the whole look. Am I being too persnickety about a rough stacked wall? Am I?

Because I am constantly reworking what I build, I can't get the hang of mortaring stones in the back for support. That would mean I'd have to commit to the placement of at least two stones. I can't commit to any two, I need to move everything around.

But I'm getting there.

The heart will definitely have to be held in with mortar. Jim has backfilled the whole wall with a lot of crushed gravel, and we may be ready to start committing to gluing some of the wobbly tippy construction together at points where it won't be seen. Then fill with dirt.

Then cap the top somehow. Commit and cap.

What I am not certain about yet is the section to the left of the heart. It seems too uneven compared to the right side and I don't think finding the perfect level capstones will change that. But is it worth reworking that side?

The whole span looks ok from a distance and that is how it will be seen.

The right side will angle down into the corner under the spruce. I can't get a clean vertical edge there so maybe I can stair-step a few small stones to angle it, then cover the edge with mulch.

Some lessons learned so far:

1. Yoga pants are softer material at the knee than jeans, so the skin doesn't rub so raw inside the kneepads. And they are cooler and lighter in wet conditions. Wear yoga pants, not jeans.
2. You don't have to stagger every stone. It looks better if you do, and the wall is stronger, but there is no way. Some will have to stack on top of each other and form vertical seams.
3. You have to use the mortar. You have to commit to at least a few stones and stick them together to avoid the constant wobblies that I am dealing with.
4. You can break stones if some are too large or you can't find the right size. Use the sledgehammer.

I'm getting there.

What a learning experience.

Thunder and Frustration

Thunderstorms rolled through last night and we got a half inch of rain.

Today it is 80 degrees, with threatening skies and rumbling thunder continuing, driving me inside instead of outside on my hands and knees moving rocks.

That's a good thing. I need a break. I am incredibly sore, so frustrated, and I was starting to get angry about how hard this project is. I worked for a while this morning before the thunder cranked up at noontime.

There is some progress, but at such a cost in hurt muscles, chapped knees even though I use kneepads, and blistered hands inside my gloves. And I am losing my mind over this.

The area to the right of the upright stone doesn't look too bad now that I fixed it per yesterday's analysis. But to the left in the middle of the wall it all looks like rubble.

I stack, wobble and rock each piece. With the protrusions on each surface, the rocks only touch points on top of each other at one or two spots, and I can't get a section to stand without knocking it all over with the placement of the next rock.

I know backfill will stabilize it from front to back, but I can't get to that point while I am still constantly tearing down what I just tried to stack.

The stone selection is poor. All the reasonably straight edged larger stones have been used and all that is left are a few hard to move huge irregular stones, and chinky small ones.

There is a heart shaped stone I want to incorporate, but with the lack of any suitable stones to continue the upper courses, this may be folly. It's such an amateur construction, who am I kidding with heart accents?

I think I need to fix the center section, and I need to start with the lower layers where two rocks tip downward.

Ummm, now that I look at these photos in detail, maybe move the heart to this dipped area? It will sit an inch or two lower, and it might fit that niche. You think?

I am hoping a short break will restore me. It's been six straight days of back breaking work to clear the strip and start laying the rocks. Jim is a huge help, but he is in such pain that it worries me.

And it bothers me how angry I am. I don't know how to do this and it is very difficult labor. I am tearing out every section I try to build, handling and moving every rock about twenty times before discarding it in frustration. Over and over.

I am angry that the stoneyard man made it sound like a project we could do. I am angry that we accepted his blithe advice so easily.

We will finish it somehow, and it will be ok. Rustic, not perfect, and that will do. But it will not look the way I envisioned and I am thoroughly discouraged and hurting.

The thunder has stopped now.

Not my frustration, though.

Rockin' Rocks

A clammy, wet day today. Overcast and cool, then drizzle in the afternoon.

At least it kept us cooler while we worked on this incredibly overwhelming stone wall project. Cooler, but wet and dirty and dragged down with soggy clothing that got heavy and hard to move in. Gloves were wet inside, but you can't handle stones without them.

This is physically demanding work and neither of us knows what we are doing.

Jim worked hard to figure out the slope of the strip and get the stone dust tamped even so the first course of stones would sit exactly level.

As soon as we started to lay rocks, the painstakingly even and level base was destroyed. You have to rock the rounded stones into place, you have to dig out a well for the uneven sides to sit in, and then you have to move each one multiple times to try it out, rock it level, then try another, then try a third stone, squishing the gravel dust every which way.

I just used slightly bigger rocks at the lower end to the left. We'll try to even things out as each layer is stacked up.  Apparently the whole rock laying thing is 99% art and "feel" and only 1% careful preparation and measuring.

The base course got laid today, I managed to get some rocks on top, and I tried a vertical accent that I'll have to build around. It's a start, but so much more to do, and I am frustrated.

I don't like the rocks to the right of this upright stone. One is canted down, and I had to stack two on top of each other immediately next to the upright, and that looks weird. I may have to redo this area.

It's a rustic stacked wall, so it won't look fitted. It will look rough. But I am beyond confused about how to get them stacked at all. It's impossible to put any rock on top of any others without it rocking and tipping.

I thought there would be more flat(ish) rocks to work with, but about 3/4 of the whole pallet, small and larges sizes both, have somewhat uneven topsides but very rounded irregular bottom sides, so they will not stack on top of each other. They rock. I've already used what evenly flat rocks I could find, and now am trying to fit increasingly rounded tippy rocks over them.

The shapes have so many corners sticking out at odd angles, that I can't place them side to side. I am not trying to get a fitted look, but I want the stones to touch at least in front.

I shim with small stones underneath, but there's a limit to how much chunky rubble you can stuff under every stone and I am already running out of small stuffer stones.

I have no idea what I'm doing. I am incredibly frustrated, Jim's back is killing him, and I am sore all over.

This is not a project that two amateurs who have never laid stone can do, and it is so physically challenging that I am at my limit. What was the guy at Harken's Stone thinking when he looked at us and said "You can do this yourselves, sure." WTF?

Getting Discouraged

Another morning spent digging out the trench for the stone wall. We need to lay down 3 inches of crushed gravel for the base, but it is a challenge to get that much soil out of the area.

It is still cool, in the high 70s and overcast, but very humid -- well over 60%. So work is sweaty and hard and slow. We took another two cartfuls of soil out back, then Jim had to mow and I pooped out.

This is nuts to try to do this kind of work in late summer when the conditions are so uncomfortable. I should have waited till fall.

We will lay down what we can -- maybe two inches of gravel or less in some of the higher spots. It will be okay. This wall is going to be very low, only a few courses of stacked stone, to a height of less than a foot I think. How much of a base does it need?

Jim asked, mid-shovel, "did the pioneers lay down gravel when they built all those miles of stone walls all over New England? Did they dig a base down three inches or more? Did they?"

I am getting discouraged. But I have to remember there is no rush. We can take as long as we need to get this silly project done.  I hope it's going to be worth it.

Slow Progress

Another day of hacking out the strip where the new stone wall will be built.

It was cool and damp and overcast, so not too hot to work this morning, but the humidity is high. The temperatures stayed in the 70s. But after just a couple hours in the morning digging and transporting soil, we called it a day.

Progress is slow.

We still have more to dig. Already we have taken cartloads and trailerfuls out back, and there is quite a mound of excavated dirt -- all from this little strip. There is more to do to widen it to accept the irregular forms of the stone.

I think I had envisioned narrower stones, more like the width of pavers or bricks, and we would only need to dig less than a foot back into the rise.

But these stones are varied, irregular, and quite large and flat. We need to dig out plenty of space to fit them, and then backfill with the dirt we took out.

Before quitting today we started sorting the pallet into piles by size and got half the stones sorted. The really huge ones won't fit into this 10 inch high low wall. Those I may use in back by the bridge for stepping stones.

This is NOT a Small Job

After all the rain it is now sunny and lovely, but definitely warm and humid -- more typical of August than the long stretch of cool dry weather we have had. The temperature is in the 80s, and the humidity makes it feel more like August should.

I got all hopped up when it was so cool to do some major projects. And off we went to Harken's and got a pallet of stones to build the low wall at the top of the driveway where the thyme was.

We asked about hiring someone to do it, and they have plenty of guys who do stonework, but they said our job (20 feet long, 10 inches high) was too small. They said we could do it ourselves.

Really?

First, it is too hot and sticky now. We can only work in the mornings when it is shady by the driveway.

Second, the grass clump at the left corner was utterly impossible to remove. It took me a couple hours one day to get this far and it would not budge.

The next day Jim worked on it for the better part of an hour with crowbars and shovels, and he did get it out. Not easy.

Third, once the grass had been manhandled out of the dirt, the rest of the soil removal turned out to be major work. The bed of the John Deere trailer broke. There is a lot of dirt to dig and move. The thyme is entrenched in there pretty firmly and each little bit has to be clawed out before digging can even start.

We got this far, and there is so much more to dig. Then we have to dig down 3 inches to receive the gravel bed, then  . . . I'm exhausted.

This is NOT a small job that two amateurs in their mid 60s can do in a few days. But we will struggle along, dig a little each morning before the heat and sun make it unbearable, move the dirt away a bit at a time. There is no rush.

I think this is the hardest part. I am hoping placing the stones will be the easy part.