I have a brick walkway from the front door to the sidewalk on the street. For the last few years, ants have been undermining the bricks. It has gotten too bad even for me to put up with. Yesterday I finally got off my ass and started working on it.

I know my technique is all wrong, and that I’m not doing a great job, but it’s much better today than it has been in quite a while, so I’m happy.

To do it properly, I’d pull all the brick up at once, grade the whole thing, compact it nicely, and then lay all the brick back down, using a string to keep properly aligned. Instead, I did it a few courses at a time, compacting only with footprints. At the top, where the ants were, I did the last dozen courses together, spraying for ants before I laid the brick. I took out two containers of roots and put in 100 of the 150 pounds of sand I bought. It’s a little uneven and because it’s not properly compacted, I expect it to settle randomly. I think I improved the grade at the bottom, where a puddle always formed. We’ll soon see.

To say I cleaned the bricks would be an overstatement. I knocked off anything caked onto them, and the gaps between the bricks are as small as I could make them. And it sure looks like they’re closer together. But when I got to the steps onto the deck, a few of the bricks were an eighth of an inch too close to the step to get the brick into. I put a couple of them on their sides, thinking perhaps it wouldn’t be that noticeable. Michael spotted it the first time he walked up the walk.

One thing about this little job surprised me.

I like to tell myself that, since I started writing this blog, I’ve been paying more attention to what I do and what I see. That I’m not running on autopilot. That I take notice of my surroundings.

I figure I’ve walked up and down this walkway on the order of three thousand times. And it wasn’t until I took it apart that I saw there was an error in the pattern. I considered putting it back in or inserting some other minor error, but I chickened out and went conformist.

It took me about seven hours over two days. I’m pretty sore right now. Working on your knees, getting up and down a lot, exercises some muscles that don’t normally get much exercise.