My life group normally meets Sunday evenings, but this week we moved it up to Friday evening. Just as I was leaving I realized it was Friday, a blog entry day, and I didn't write an entry. I couldn't write one now and it would be too late to do it when I got back, and besides it was already Saturday morning in China. - They can again read my blog, but without pictures. Hopefully it will get back to where there will be no restrictions. We can pray to that end. - I decided to wait and write an entry for Monday.
Saturday morning came and I decided to go out and work on the sidewalk project before breakfast while it was still cool. The weatherman promised - if their promises mean anything - that today would be the hottest day of the year so I decided to get an early start. As I headed to the garage to get some tools my eye caught a yellow spot outside. I stopped and looked out the window and saw that a sunflower had popped open during the night. It was nice and big and facing the sun that was just coming up. I went and got my camera and headed toward the garden and took a picture of its smiling face.
Back to the house to put the camera away and on to the garage to get my tools out to work on preparing to pour a small section of sidewalk. It took a good 90 minutes to get everything ready. Now it was time for breakfast and some more energy for an already hot day. Went and ate breakfast and came back, mixed and poured the first five foot section. As hot as the sun was, a five foot section was all I wanted to do today. I wanted to trowel it out and finish it off with a swirl design. After doing that I continued to prepare so that I could pour more next Friday and Saturday. I will try to work in some teaching pictures of the process next time. I am sure there are some things I do that many of my readers don't know about.
I hesitated taking the following picture and showing it because of so much unfinished work, but I decided to be humble and open up this project to you. There is more than just pouring the sidewalk to do. I need to prepare for automatic foundation watering and maybe lawn watering along the sidewalk. We have soil here that expands and shrinks very much with moisture content and if you don't keep the foundation moist year around there can be foundation damage. When I built my hours I chose the pier beam foundation design. My house is sitting on about 90 piers that extend down to solid rock, which varied from 8 to 12 feet below surface level. This provides a stable slab, but watering around the perimeter is still a strong recommendation.
We will stay on this topic for several days and hopefully have some interesting things to show and talk about.
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