Small labyrinth update
/I may not have mentioned it, but my study is essentially the attic; we put in a staircase and finished off the space when our son was born so the little bugger could have, I don’t know, like a room of his own or whatever.
The problem is that the little mini-split (that’s a technical term) air-conditioning unit is kaput and has been for over a month now. Technically, it’s the compressor unit outside, but the effect is the same: it’s 100° up there. (Our HVAC company is dithering.)
Consequently, I have had my laptop downstairs all this time, and for the last two weeks I’ve taken over the dining room table as I prep for the Alchemy Art Fundraiser this Saturday. It’s a mess. (Yes, I know that a formal dining room with an heirloom corner cupboard doesn’t exactly say “freaking hippie burner,” but I contain multitudes.)
My Lovely First Wife has been extremely patient about it, but if I added anything else to the clutter I’m afraid she would have to say something tart.
Therefore, when I put together the video for the GALAXY Project, I thought about composing a soundtrack for it — but that would mean bringing my piano keyboard and its stand and the cables downstairs, and were you not listening when I said what would happen if I did that?
Maybe today…
The heat has also meant that my work in the labyrinth to ready it for the Tour of Homes in October has been limited. Intermittent rain and hellish humidity is not conducive to yard work. But last week I decided that since the ground was soft, I could go ahead and plant some grass seed around the new steps.
Unfortunately, I still had a ton of building supplies still lying around: bricks, pavers, wall blocks, bags of topsoil. It didn’t make sense to seed those areas until I had moved everything to a storage area, so I started.
The first thing I did was use some of the wall blocks to separate the painted ferns at the steps from what will be the grassy areas.
We’ll see. I may go back and replace those with brick edging.
Then, still avoiding actually seeding the area, I did a little leveling out in the labyrinth. Over the last thirteen years, the southwest quadrant has developed a dip as the planet wears away, so much so that some stones are usually covered with soil as it washes downhill.
My original plan when I started this refurbishment was to elevate the paving stones and make the entire quadrant flatter, but common sense told me that I would never get it done. So I’ve gone with my old fallback, which is to pull up the sunken stones, put gravel underneath to slow their descent, and relevel just that section.
On the left, sunken stones; on the right, reasonably level stones.
That may not look like much, but by time I was done I was drenched in sweat and exhausted — any further landscaping is going to have to wait until we’re out of the high 80s.
