Brick Pathway: Completed

Photos from last summer, and from yesterday. I first started laying out bricks for a pathway from front yard to side in August, 2007; wrote about the project in September, and again a couple of days later.

Sometime in October, I gave up for the winter, and left the bricks laid out on top of the grass, hoping perhaps that nature would work her wonders, kill off the greenery for me, rot the roots to make them softer to dig up, or possibly even sink the bricks down into the earth to save us the trouble.

No such luck. In fact, the grass grew thick and wild over the bricks, leading HomoDomi to twist his ankle in the thicket a few weeks ago (because of the bricks above the level of the rest of the lawn, we couldn't mow the area, either). The dense too-long grass and piled bricks have been a real eyesore, and this pathway a task guiltily avoided all spring.

Well, the Texan took it upon herself to cut the space out for the path last week. I sand-filled and bricked in about half of the resultant ditch, and then she finished it off when I was out of town last weekend. It is lovely, smooth (ish) and best of all, finished. You can wheel the garbage can from the back all the way to the front yard now, something we couldn't do before.

More work is required, half of which is "gardening" (getting blooming plants in the stretch of dirt on the right of the photo -- dahlias, iris and gladiolas have been planted, but the bulbs/tubers were all nearly rotten, so I doubt if any will pop up -- we're too late for blooming this year anyway). The other half may wait for next summer, after other projects have been finished: We will be pulling forward the fence to meet the front of the house, from where it currently is halfway back. More about that when it's done.