Building Things by Christine DePetrillo

Every summer, The Husband and I are involved in some project. We’ve built a barn, vinyl sided a house and barn, installed wood flooring, built a tavern room (named Black Wolf Tavern for the bar in my Maple Leaf Series and for my werewolf of a black German Shepherd), landscaped properties, and constructed a wood shed to name a few of our endeavors. This year’s summer adventure was making a 500 square foot patio complete with a fire pit.

I’m always amazed at the thought that goes into these projects. The steps are many and the order important. One doesn’t just slap a patio down. In our case, a huge retaining wall had to be built of granite boulders. The wall had to be backfilled and leveled then filled with gravel for drainage.

The fire pit came next so it would look as if it were built into the patio itself. Pavers and bricks came together in a circle to contain many future blazes. S’mores are on the horizon. The only way I’ll eat marshmallows.

A layer of stone dust topped that and finally the irregular flagstone finished it off. Let me just say that irregular flagstone and OCD don’t mix. Yikes. One has to release the idea of perfection and accept that if you want a wild, woodsy look, you need to give up being particular about tight joints, patterns, and precision leveling. That was hard for us, but we muddled through.

And the result is exactly what we pictured.

I love these projects. It’s how The Husband and I define fun. We’d rather being doing things like this than sunbathing on some tropical beach somewhere. Plus, it’s awesome exercise. We both feel great physically. All those muscles ache just mean we’re alive and it’s good to be alive.

I’m eager to enjoy that patio and fire pit, especially in autumn, surrounded by the reds, oranges, and yellows of the trees and our mountain views. I also think the space will be conducive to writing with plenty of stimulating landscape to spark my imagination. Nothing gets my Muse revved like spending time in nature. Sometimes I think Mother Nature IS my Muse.

And I’m cool with that.

Summer is over now and school has started back up. I wonder what we’ll build next year.

Have you been involved in any major projects? If so, what? If not, what would you like to try your hand at?

Toodles,

Chris

www.christinedepetrillo.weebly.com

A Yard Facelift

Some of you may know I have a ginormous German Shepherd named Anubis.

I generally refer to him as The Werewolf. My backyard is a small, fenced-in space that is barely large enough for The Werewolf to terrorize tiny beasties that also live there. He's not destructive in the least (Mama raised him right), however, just the simple act of playing fetch causes him to tear up precious lawn and trample plants. Plus, during these hot July days, my all-black monster gets overheated pretty easily. Due to these issues, we had to do some renovating to the yard.

We dug out a stream and a pond so Anubis could cool off at his leisure. I tried the blue, plastic kiddie pool route last summer, and while The Werewolf loved it, the pool just didn't stand up to his constant in and out and thrashing about. Now, he can slosh around in the pond without fear of needing duct tape to keep all the water in.

 

 

We planted things behind the stream and pond so he is less likely to roam back there. He still explores that area, but the way the plants are placed makes him unable to whip through at the speed of light. It's sort of like an obstacle course now where he needs to tread carefully to navigate around.

Around our fire pit, the grass would always burn due to sun exposure, and more recently due to dog piss, so we built a patio around it instead with crushed stone and large flagstones. The area is way more conducive to sitting around now, and I'm sure we'll use it a lot more. As a bonus, Anubis doesn't like to walk on the crushed stone. Ah-HA!

 

 

So while the grass is still torn up in spots and new spots get sacrificed every time we play, the rest of the yard looks amazing. It's about dragging the eyes off the patches of dead grass and to the colors of the flowering plants and the gentle ripple of the pond and stream.

Yeah, it's about tricking you. I had to do something. It's my Outdoor Writing Office out there in the summer. I couldn't be distracted by the non-lushness of my grass. I needed areas to focus on that were beautiful and inspiring.

Hey, we do what we gotta do. Someday I'll move to Vermont where The Werewolf can run free and there is no manicured lawn to worry about.

What would your dream yard look like?

Happy Fourth of July!

Toodles,
Chris
www.christinedepetrillo.weebly.com Adult Romance
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www.christineteaches.weebly.com The Writing Teacher