Because the work is so grueling, my wife has been trying to talk me out of it, in the interest of my well-being. She’d rather I wait until November, when things start to cool off, and she’s less likely to find me slumped in the weeds. But I worry that the shrubs I’m planting won’t survive the winter if I don’t get them in the ground early so they have time to root properly (we do get frosty nights occasionally in Central Florida).
She went to Miami with a friend this weekend, so on Saturday, I couldn’t wait for her to hit the road so I could run outside and start working. The friend parked in my wife’s spot in the garage, the two of them drove off, and I grabbed my tools.
I had a triangular-shaped planting bed that I wanted to edge with blocks, but unfortunately, there were three sprinkler heads that had been placed too close to the edge of the planting bed, where they would be covered with the blocks. So I dug them up and had to re-pipe each of them to move a mere 2 inches.
Next, I weeded the planting bed. I kept digging up these little pea-sized white things, which on closer inspection turned out to be rubbery eggs of some kind. I told my daughter about it, and she became very excited at the prospect that they might be snake eggs. She put them in a jar with some sand, and the next day found a tiny lizard in the jar. The following day, there were two lizards.
On Sunday, I made a jig to set the blocks in the soil at an even depth and only had to cut two blocks to fit at the apex of the triangle. In this photo you can see one of the sprinklers I had to re-pipe, just at the junction of the two blocks:
Unfortunately, I forgot to close the garage door while I was cutting the blocks in the driveway with a masonry blade, and found the two cars and everything else inside covered with a fine, gritty pink dust.
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