The Patio: A Cautionary Tale

Or, how I threw out my back and what I’m doing to fix it.

And Also, Slow and steady finishes the race… eventually.

When we moved into our house, it had this cute, completely unusable brick patio. Persistent, deeply rooted weeds covered it from March until November. It was too small to support a small table and chairs and a grill. It was uneven. Water pooled in one corner (away from the house, thankfully). The only way to manage the weeds was to dump Round-Up on it every spring, and I just think that’s a bad idea.

(I want the backyard to be a haven for insects and birds, so I’ve come to believe that I should behave as if pesticides and herbicides are not available… although I will poison Chinese Elm in a heartbeat, because they’re incredibly hardy and excellent at growing into fences… cutting them doesn’t work, and neither does girdling… no mercy.)

As you’ll see in the next photo, we’ve got other issues, a big one being that lawn does not like to grow in this soil. In the photo below, you can see some of the weeds that do thrive in that area. (We pulled those weeds, sheet mulched the area and then planted a combination of grass and clover. Right now, because of the consistent dry heat, the clover is thriving and the grass is only barely hanging on, with a couple of dead patches that we’ll overseed in the fall. I’m not upset about that, because the bees like it, and the clover is a good bridge between our current flower plantings — the salvia and lavender are fading and the western clematis hasn’t revved up yet.)

So, back to the patio, we decided to pull up the bricks, to fix the underlayment, and then we would re-lay the brick and expand the patio so it could support a seating area and an eating area.

The problem: there was no underlayment. It was brick on dirt (not soil — just sandy, mostly dead dirt). We started digging out, expanded the area outward by getting rid of a skinny bed with leggy roses in it. We took out a poorly laid concrete pad. It was a very slow, labor-intensive, time-consuming situation that we couldn’t get done in July and August (because HOT!), which led to an awkward winter.

And then, in 2020… Covid-19. Everything went pear-shaped in the spring and summer. The excavation proved to be too much for us, so we decided to hire someone. We got a quote, made some plans… and then nothing happened. Dana got busy at work, and we each thought the other would follow up with the contractor… it just didn’t happen. It was a bummer, but there was a lot of life happening last year, so it’s not something I can get upset about.

But THEN, in 2021, the contractors got too busy to do our job. It’s entirely our fault that we ended up here. I’m glad everyone is busy. We need a patio, though, so we shifted back to the DIY plan, and got more ambitious. We want to make sure that we have adequate drainage, and that we’re level from side to side and appropriately sloped from the house.

One thing we got right: we hired someone to excavate the site. BIG. HELP. (We are forever grateful for Tim, from Tim’s Hauling, who hauled away most of the brick, the dirt we’d excavated already, cleared the “back 40” (our small “parking” area beyond the back fence), and then brought his tiny earth mover into the yard and went to work. A few of our neighbors hired him for smaller jobs on the spot… he might be afraid to come back here…)

Yeah, so here’s where it got interesting for me, anatomically speaking. After Tim’s hard work (yay!), we still had to finish digging out. I spent a bunch of time over about five days, moving the rest of the dirt to the side and pulling out rocks. Lots of pulling and lifting over a short period of time… BIG MISTAKE, because that’s not the kind of work I normally do.

But there was quite a bit of progress, so that’s good.

If I had taken a break after that, eased up on my daily yoga and walking practice, rested, slowed down (done that work over two weeks instead of a weekend), I might have avoided the worst of it.

I didn’t do that. Instead I turned around and moved an order of quail and mice from my porch to the outdoor learning center, which involved some lifting and repackaging of heavy, awkward packages. Also a BIG MISTAKE.

Over the next week, I felt my back slowly stiffen up and get more and more sore. Sneezing became a situation to be negotiated, because my lower back was so tight that it hurt.

About a week and a half ago, I woke up in so much pain that I couldn’t stand, walk, or sit. My back (butt?) was in spasm and would not let go. A trip to urgent care, a course of prednisolone, gabapentin and methocarbamol later… I can walk, sit and stand. I still have some nerve issues in one of my calves, and weakness in one of my hips and quads. I can do very slow, careful, highly modified yoga. I’m doing some foam rolling. And some short walks. And I can sneeze, which is helpful (because allergies are a bummer).

But no lifting. No pulling. Lots of rest.

Dana has taken on the biggest load, and because this summer has been one, long, heat wave, he’s doing lots of work in the morning and evening. My contribution has been… raking gravel. I feel badly about not being more helpful, but… I’m physically incapable.

Dana just finished with the gravel — he added another few inches after that last photo was taken. It has been tamped. One more pass to make sure it’s level where it needs to be, and then he can start the sand and pavers (which were delivered two weeks ago).

As for me, I’m out beyond the back fence, spreading the rest of the gravel in our “parking” area, 20 minutes at a time, early in the morning before it gets hot, while the tractor sprinkler tackles the lawn. The pile is getting smaller as it gets spread around.

Life lesson: Progress is the goal. Are we closer today than we were yesterday? It doesn’t matter how insignificant any one day seems, because it all adds up.

Moral of the story: if you’re not used to doing heavy manual labor, don’t try to do it all at once — slow and steady still finishes the race, it might just take a little bit (or a lot) longer. Better yet, if you can, hire someone to do the heaviest lifting.