“Hard Labor” has been Mike’s life this spring as he takes on a serious home improvement. He loves working in the yard, and being a perfectionist, everything he tackles is done with excellence. I love that about him. Last spring, after a major storm wiped out our back fence and most of the landscaping, he built a raised brick planter filling it with purple Chinese fringe bushes that are growing beautifully. He also planted our garage area with fragrant Star Jasmine that climb along the fence. Those two projects were hugely successful and after a year of growing the air is filled with the sweet aroma we enjoy every time we leave the house. 
This year he decided that a new walkway was needed behind our garage. The area is so shaded and narrow that it has become a muddy mess. Cookie and Biskit run across it while chasing squirrels, getting their feet covered with mud that requires constant attention when they come back into the house. Or, as often happens, they run into the house and track the floor with their paw prints compounding the cleaning issue.
After multiple trips to Home Depot and Lowes, and much discussion, he decided on constructing it with cement blocks that look like individual bricks. Since this is his project I have tried to stay out of his way physically and with my verbal “tips” and watch the making of the walkway. Landscape had to be removed, bags of base dirt hauled in (requiring MANY trips in his little Honda Civic) to make the area level, edging installed to hold all in place, stones cut and laid (sometimes three to four times just to get them perfect), sand spread over all the bricks and between the cracks, new landscape purchased and planted, gutter run off rerouted, gate bottom cut so it would close over the pathway....more steps than I had ever imagined. After three weeks it is finished and looking most excellent. The recent rains have given us a chance to check its drainage and I am glad to report the problem of muddy paws seems to be solved! Of course, one success spawns ideas for more improvements so I have been informed a shed is next on the list. I’ll keep you posted...
