The Sand between the Bricks

Went out in the cool morning to put in a dutiful hour on the front yard, and worked for five hours instead. I'm still not finished with the brick pathway, but I am further (about half way). Andrew took this photo, a different vantage point from other photos I've posted.

I am using sand from the neighbor's back yard to fill between (and under) the bricks. Miss Jane, next door, has just had her above-ground pool removed. This is big. This is the pool where Molly and Will learned to swim; the pool Miss Jane and Miss Ellen used to swim in daily. John (Jane's son) remembers the pool being installed when he was still a kid, in 1958. The pool-remover-contractor said he had never seen a pool like it, in 20 years of pool work.

The pool has had problems the last couple of years, including leaks requiring more than the usual maintenance to fix. She's been heating it using solar panels above her garage, but with her arthritis, she needs the water to be at 80° or more, and the water rarely was warm enough for her to swim, even in the long sunny Portland summers. They reckon that she'll be saving enough money in power bills (even with the solar panels) to pay for membership in a health club with a specially heated pool, with a little left over.

It's going to be a big job to clean up the yard, which now can take the trophy for Trailer-Trash Yard of the Block (except it's hidden behind the house, unlike our mess). There's six inches of sand over the whole base of where the pool stood, so it's great for both households that we're needing a bunch of sand next door. They get full sun in the summer, so there will be room for a vegetable garden, if John is up for tending it.

Until then, the cats are doing their part to fertilize the ground, studding the giant box with neatly piled mounds of sand, surrounded by spiraling swoops of claw-marks like a Zen garden, decorated with a single paw print.