Originally posted 3.September.2006
On the heels of a hellish few weeks I decided to relax this weekend. The trouble with this plan, and if you know me you know there is almost always trouble with one of my 'plans', is that yet again there was something to distract me in a maddening sort of fashion. Something just minor enough to seem simple and make you think you can take care of it quickly and go back to "relaxing" inevitably turns into a battle of wits of major proportions and leaves you looking harassed and mumbling unintelligibly to yourself about how you can win against this (insert choice of inanimate object here).
Such is the case with my patio. In my defense, it's poorly designed, even my Dad and brother agree with this statement. Further to my defense, I didn't design it, nor did I build it. It came with the place. The thing about it is, well, its at the complete wrong angle. Thus when it rains my patio floods up to the door. I could live with that. I could, really. The bigger problem is the landscape design is crap so the resulting flood washes mulch, dirt, mud and whatever else it can find up to my back door. Once it dries up, I am forced to sweep everything back from whence it came. This annoys me. Greatly.
So I had a plan. I bought those decorative little fencey-thingies for putting along the flower bed and thought that would keep mulch and friends out during rain. Regrettably, the crap building/landscape debacle continued when I found cement only 3 inches down at the point the fencey bits needed to be pushed into. So scrapped I that plan. This was several months ago on a day off.
Plan B was to buy some bricks and place a layer across the opening of the patio which would stop the onslaught nasty bits. This plan emerged several weeks ago on another day off. Unfortunately, as it turned out, it wasn't high enough. Much to my consternation, the water from the flat above splashed down with enough force to somehow fling the mulch and dirt over the layer of bricks like champion bloody pole vaulters. The second problem that emerged was that the pool of water on the patio then couldn't drain back and the patio didn't dry off. *Sigh*
Well then I was off to travel and such so I've just gotten back round to the problem yesterday now that I've finally got a day off again. But, no fear, for I had a new idea. *Ding!*
I purchased more bricks and turned them on their sides to make them taller so they couldn't be pole vaulted by twigs and mulch. I then made smaller spaces between every few so that water could drain back out. Better, I declared with satisfaction. And then it rained in the afternoon...
Somehow, devious chunks of mulch and dirt found their way through my drainage holes and still my bricks were not high enough to deter them from pole vaulting activities. At this point, I began to think this project was turning into a Swamp Castle construction site a la Monty Python's Holy Grail.
It was then I devised a new strategy. Or "strat-eeg-eey", as I affectionately call them. I would buy still more bricks. This time there would be two layers of bricks on their side but the drainage spaces would be staggered so even if bits of dastardly twigs, mulch and dirt found their way through the first space... well they wouldn't be able to navigate two corners to find their way onto my patio. And I placed the 3rd set of bricks across the top of the first two, as a capstone if you will, to steady the staggered bricks and create such a height that I was certain would be over the limits of any Olympic-bound pole vaulting twigs that may train in my area. Genius, I declared last night!
And today it rained again. But not just any rain, oh no. God-like fury, end of mankind, Noah's Ark sort of rain. Rain with such force that it conspired with mulch and twigs to force a certain percentage of them through the twists and turns of my staggered spaces. Anger and threats of bodily harm to all landscapers everywhere.
So then I got still more bricks and took away the staggered spaces and filled them in. And it rained some more. (Editor's note: this is rainy season in Florida. I didn't know they had one of those but apparently we do.) And still some dirt made it through and the drainage is of course not so good. %#@*!!! Right?
I thought, do I need more bricks? Surely not, soon my patio will resemble a scene from Poe's "Cask of Amontillado" and I'll be forced to leave just a small slit through which I can spy visitors approaching and shoot arrows if need be. What? I'm English. We've got lots of castles with this technology and I've got to say slitty arrow holes help with Jehovah's Witnesses and such, no? Good idea!
Anyway, after conference call with others who have experience in these matters (read: Dad), the new-new-new plan involves going back to fewer brick design staggered drainage spaces but using netting to keep out everything except the water. Tomorrow, I'm going to buy netting. At the end of this project no doubt my Mum will ring and ask me how the relaxing is going. And I'll have to say, "well Mum, let me ask you this? Do you know anyone who needs some spare bricks?"
And now for your reading pleasure (a llama once bit my sister) courtesy of the Python lads...
King of Swamp Castle: When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, lad, the strongest castle in all of England.
