This weekend we took on the project of repairing our front walk. It was made up of 18-inch square flagstone that acted as stepping stones from the long driveway to the front porch of the house. It traveled straight for most of the walk and then turned in to the left to the house.
We had a few issues with the walk. The first was the fact that the stepping stones had shifted out of place, and some of them even started to rise and tip in places. This was a hazard, and more than one person in our family has tripped over the stones. The mulch that was underneath had been subject to runoff, and the surface was no longer level.
Another issue was that because of poor fill and poor placement of the stones, at least three of them had broken beyond repair, and some of the stones had chipped corners.
The third issue was the number of stones were too few. They were placed far apart, making it difficult for anyone without a wide stride to walk them.
The fourth issue was that numerous weeds were growing between the stones, making the other issues even worse than they might have been in themselves.
Needless to say, the walk had been annoying me for some time, and I finally convinced my husband that we needed to put it on our priority list.
The first thing I did on Saturday morning was to remove the old stones. I stacked them on our porch, and made piles for each of the broken ones. I wasn’t sure what I would do with broken pieces, but they had to be useful for something, I thought. I was almost done when my husband and our three kids emerged from the house. My husband thought I should have just moved the stones to the lawn instead of stacking them, but he let that go. The kids were eager to help.
Next, while my husband set off to mow the overgrown grass and weeds in the yard (good things those stones weren’t on the lawn), the kids and I removed all of the weeds that had been growing on the walk path. Well, I did much of the weeding, while they did a lot of digging for worms. They especially loved it when they would find nice fat ones. My daughter was less squeamish about it than her older brother. She fearlessly picked them up in her hands while he yelled and jumped away if one wiggled to much.
We are well rich in worms, enough so that we could probably open a bait stand. I had to convince the kids that we weren’t in a position to be so entrepreneurial at the moment. Some kids have lemonade stands…
Next time, I’ll take about how I started to define the walk, and what happened to those worms.
Click here for more articles by Mary Ann Romans.
Related Articles
Hail in August and Our New Walk