Stalled!

Normally rain is a great thing. I have not ONCE watered the garden in the month of July, which should help our water bill tremendously. The problem, though, is that is rains. every. day.

We've excavated all the dirt from the wall and moved all the bricks, so our yard has piles of soil and cinder blocks everywhere. But we need a dry day to level the soil, add sand, level that, and put down the first row of bricks, which is what will take the longest and matter the most in this project.

Unfortunately, this is the view from outside my bedroom window. And yes, we are expecting more rain in the next hour.

We've also encountered other cool setbacks, like the builders of the previous wall building it on uneven brick pieces, throwing two tons of broken stone in with the dirt, and not removing a huge concrete slab that was probably a grounding piece for an even older wall. The piece means we needed to pull up some of the brick pavers from the patio to have enough room to re-lay the wall on solid ground. Which also means we'll need to do a lot of work on the patio when we're done with the wall.

We can't find any day laborers in Pittsburgh, so I think it will be Alex and myself hauling 3-5 tons of gravel up the hill. Bah!