14 September 2019

Eight o’clock found me up t’ Tammy’s, shoveling crushed stone into 4½  gallon plastic buckets… eight of them this time.  Returned to Fern Lake and excavated the area under the Shop exterior door threshold where the too steep (and thus much too slippery) gravestone ramp is being replaced with shallow gravestone steps.  (Note: At the time the ramp was being built, I was told in quite strong terms that was a bad idea.  Lessons learned.)  Tammy wants 8″ of drainage stone under the steps, so once the hole was the right size and depth, I dumped in all eight plastic buckets so carefully filled this morning.  One guess as to whether that was enough stone.  So, late morning, I returned to the scene of the crime (good thing Tammy lives only 10 minutes away) and stole another eight buckets of stone.  Fingers crossed that this will be enough to finish the Shop door steps base plus the house drip edges.  Saw Tammy this trip and we decided that she’d better bring another whole load of stone when we work on the front walkway and barn steps.  More lessons learned.  Went to Goodro’s after leaving Tammy’s to buy back the Loctite PL Premium^® construction adhesive and the Geocel Pro Flex^® clear flexible caulking that I returned for credit after finishing the front steps project.  Just ‘cause I could, spent the afternoon playing with the Kubota.  Completely took apart the remnants of a stone wall that bordered the driveway north side inwards from the road.  Purpose of that oh, so satisfying destruction was to establish a level 4 feet wide base for a rebuilt stone wall that will connect into the one along the road.  Also removed a hillock between our mailbox and the roadside phone pole.  Rocks in that hill have been the nemesis of my lawn mower blade all summer.  Nevermore!