Doing construction work like a gardener

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I really had never planned to put a flagstone path to the back area of the garden, but it just seemed to make sense. I had the extra flagstone lying around from a previous job, and this year I decided to see if I could really clean up this area, including putting flagstones around the base of the tree, where the root sticks out. And I approached this construction job very differently than if I were doing it in an afternoon, for someone else. I'm doing it like a gardener, and it's a labor of love that's taking, like most of what I do in the garden, just about forever. I would like to have it finished before the weather turns really hot, but if I don't, there's always next season.

This kind of attitude really appeals to me. I do my best, but when things don't turn out the way they should in a season, you just fall back, regroup, and give it another shot next year. But this isn't the same as always saying "later", which means that you'll never do it, this is just the slow pace of a gardener.

Doing something like this means doing a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, with no real plan, and without having pieces that have been clearly designed to fit together. You just take your time, playing in the dirt and mud a bit, trying out different pieces of flagstone, until you have something that kinda fits together. And then you go back and replace pieces. And then the next day you ponder it, and the next day you move more pieces around. Then you test that the flagstone doesn't wobble when you walk on it, and you take some pieces out, and rearrange them. If someone were watching, it would drive them crazy, wondering what's taking so long. When you're doing it, it's soothing, like tending to a garden.

As of today I've gotten as far as getting the flagstones where I want them, and putting in the grout for the first area, which I call the "apron". It's done with flexible adhesive, using a caulking gun, and then dirtied up with dry grout. Then I pour more dry grout around the edges to finish that area off. Then I go back and look at it, and do some more refining. Then I look at it later, and then the next day.

As you can tell, I'm in no hurry. And since this is going around the base of a tree, which continues to grow, that root there will start to push up some of the path, which I will need to redo in the future. But that's fine, I'll fix that when the time comes. Gardens change, and grow, and I'm fine with that.

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