Brick Pathway

I told myself that I could not work on the kitchen plans until I have distributed my IRA money out of a low-interest earning money market and into a safe but higher earning mutual fund. I started researching mutual funds in March (when I read Mutual Funds for Dummies cover to cover), but my money continues to sit where it was to begin with. I find the whole subject painfully tedious and painfully ... painful. The only other time I researched and settled upon a long term savings plan was November 2000, just before the bottom dropped out on the market. I lost 60% of my retirement savings (from Infocom days) in three weeks.

I am not the only one with such a story, and frankly there wasn't that much to lose. The whole let-people-manage-their-own-retirement-funds concept was invented by idiots and scoundrels who stand to gain a lot of money off fools like myself who think something called a "security" should be secure.

Anyway, faced with the prospect of staring at mutual fund prospectuses yet again, I started work on the brick pathway. Let me do something with my hands!

The photo shows how wretched the north side yard looks right now. The broad dirt area is where the old concrete sidewalk was. We never used it -- it ran too close to the house and was too narrow. In July when Andrew and the teenagers were carting muck from under the porch, I crowbarred all the concrete up, broke it into portable sized pieces, and carried it all down to the container they were filling with dirt. (Those photos are on a defunct disk, alas!)

The plan is to pull the fence up to the edge of the house (you can't really see that corner in this photo); have a nice brick walkway leading around the house to the back; and all the space between the path and the house will be filled with shrubs and flowers. Early fall is an excellent time to plant in Portland, because there are plant sales and still two months before the weather gets ugly. So we want to get this ready for planting pretty soon.

I laid out the bricks for the new pathway in early August, using the remaining bricks from the chimney. This is the second design -- the first one was too curvy. I had hoped the bricks would kill the grass underneath, but the grass has just grown through the cracks.

Today I staked out the lines and removed the bricks (photo tomorrow). Tonight I will soak the bricks and the ground thoroughly with a sprinkler. The soaking will make the sod easier to cut, and the mortar easier to rub off.

The cat, by the way, is Natasha, who keeps me company whenever I work with string.