enJOYing the rewards

Without labor nothing prospers.  ~Sophocles

we praise hard work in this family. and what’s gonna work? teamwork!

which leads me to this atrocity that we call a backyard. the winter always wreaks havoc on our unmaintainable (is that even a word?) yard and it’s a mess to clean up.

i had no plans to lay a patio this weekend. after all, look at it. it’s all weeds. but gibson mowed so we could at least walk around back there. remember, no intentions of pavers today.

so why did we end up at OSH just hours after the previous photo was taken?

2 reasons: i made some serious cash at our garage sale AND OSH was having a no-tax sale.
soooo, we (gibson and i) grabbed our gloves and headed across the street to get 120 12×12 pavers. 60 in grey and 60 in tan.

two OSH guys and gibson ended up loading up 60 for us to take home on the first load and so i didn’t have to do much but stand around and look pretty while they worked up a sweat.

until we got them home, then we loaded them all to the backyard. and man-o-man it was HOT!

so we took breaks. and when i told gibson we should take a 5 minute break he said, “nah, i only need 3.”

this kid worked so hard. had hustle like i’d never seen. really made us proud.

once we were watered up and cooled off, we realized that we didn’t really have much more left in that second load so we timed ourselves and raced to get them done. and once we got them all stacked, it was time to lay ’em down. yeah, i’m lazy so i didn’t cover the ground with plastic or kill the weeds first. my plan is to just spray the weeds as they come up. it’s how i roll.

super happy that i decided to do a checkerboard pattern. it’s so rad!

gibson’s still at it!

and i was happy to let the two of them enjoy the fruits of all our labor. now i have a clean space to put my gram’s patio furniture and a place to relax while we enjoy the backyard. we will eat, drink and be merry out here.