Stepping Stone Installation

We installed our new stepping stones yesterday morning, made with the chips of china I've collected while walking Olga. They turned out pretty well!

They lead from our steps into the garden, a strip of grass that always gets worn and muddy. I dug out a circle of soil and nested the stones into the ground. This was harder than it sounds -- below about half an inch of dirt were rocks, pebbles, construction debris and other compacted, hard stuff. I guess it's good because it gives support to that well-trodden area, but it was a pain to dig and even out.

I put the stone with the hunk o' glass nearest the step, with the glass off to the right side where it's unlikely to be in the way. Turns out it doesn't feel uneven at all, even if it does stick up a bit. My feet couldn't tell!

Just before I started the project, Dave suggested removing all the grass and putting in bark or plantings around the stones -- he argued that we'd only have to dig the area once. But that meant we'd have to delay their installation to order materials. I just wanted to get them in, and dammit, I had a plan. I was frankly quite cranky that he was changing things up at the last minute, after we'd talked about this for weeks. I'm not sure he understood my attachment to my agenda, but we went ahead and put the stones in. I suppose we can dig the area out more in the future if we want to, but after Dave saw how hard the soil is I think he may have changed his mind.

While we were working a peacock butterfly flew up and landed on a sunny patch of dirt. I only had a chance to get one shot before Olga charged up and scared it away. Doesn't it seem early for a butterfly? Still, I was so glad to see it, considering we had chilly temperatures in the 40s (F) just a few days ago.

Olga and I took our daily walk to the cemetery. Here was my rubbish clean-up find for the day -- a rusty stereo component of some sort. I have no idea exactly what it is. Anyway, it went into the bin. (Thank goodness there are big bins at the cemetery.)

Then I went grocery shopping, never my favorite task. I felt a bit crowded in our little neighborhood store, even though Waitrose was lining people up and controlling access. There's just not much space in that shop. But I was able to buy everything we needed, including eggs, and I could even have bought toilet paper if we'd needed any. It's nice to see evidence that people are calming down and we're leaving hoarding and panic-buying behind.

Oh, and we're on Spring break, for what it's worth. No schoolwork until April 14. That means more to Dave, with all of his distance learning and Zoom classes, than it does to me, just working on my little library projects. I'd originally planned to be in Florida now, in the alternate universe of non-COVID normalcy. But hey, a vacation is always nice!