Those Wonderful Spinneys

  I just want to say "thank you" to the Spinneys, the lovely family we worked for last week down in Boothbay. They couldn't have been more accommodating, helpful, friendly, or grateful. I leave jobs like that one (which are a true rarity) feeling like I should be paying them, instead of the other way around. It's only been a few days, and I miss them already. Thanks, guys.

  It was the wrong time of day to photograph wet bluestone, but you get the general idea. 75% of the patio was reusing the stones that had been there previously, which the owners cleaned with a pressure washer after we laid. Remarkably, one could not tell the difference between the old and new stones afterward.

  The retaining wall is a manufactured product called Verazzo Stone, which is incredibly easy to install and very strong as a finished unit.

  
  Spinney the Spider...

Hamburger Hill

  Last week, Mike Fitzgerald and I went up on the hill and finished off the last 30 feet or so of "Trigula's Great Wall of Horrors" for Paul Belcher of Midcoast Masonry.  It wouldn't have been so bad, except there was 30 feet left to do, complete with Oak Hill caps, and probably enough money left in the budget for 10. Needless to say, we broke our backs and managed to finish in a couple of days, so we didn't lose our shirts too bad. It came out nice, too.

 Here is another shot of the lower courtyard area, which was done two or three years ago.

Entomophobia

  Damon and I finished a handsome little 64 square-foot patio today in Camden for a wonderful couple from Texas. They really were a pleasure to work for and I now consider them not only customers, but friends and neighbors. They chose a great restoration brick, which I believe is a Montpelier Red, and a granite cobble border that brought the whole thing together nicely.

   It can go either way when a customer has the materials chosen and the design all laid out. It either makes our job easier and we just waltz in and put it all together, or it's a complete nightmare and nothing fits or matches and the project looks so horrible when we're done that my camera suddenly runs out of battery power and refuses to take web-shots.  These guys definitely belonged in the former category and even volunteered to help us dig.  It is truly the rewarding and pleasurable jobs such as this one that keep us going through tedious and difficult times that invariably arise in any of the trades.

 
  At one point today, we ran back to my house for some tools and I spotted this terrifying and beautiful event dangling over the truck...

  The cruelty and sadness of remarkable Life and Death struggles...

"Toulouse-Lautrec's Garden Trowel"

  I did this little sculpture-patio for a very sweet couple in Camden a few days ago. Nothing fancy, just something to define the piece and bring together with the sprawling hillside gardens, paths, and walls. The piece is entitled "Toulouse-Lautrec's Garden Trowel" and the artist's name is Amy (Something, I will find out what). It spins on its axis, which scared the living hell out of me the first time I bumped into it and sent it spinning.

The Start Center Walls/Aphrodite"s Gift

  Went over to The Start Center just down the road from my house and started building some walls with my good friends Ronald and Margaret, the actual "starters" of the Start Center, wherein they practice a form of healing know as RCT, or Re-Connective Therapy. You can read more about it at their website: http://thestartcenter.org  Meanwhile, here are some pictures:

  When, I went home for lunch, Laura told me to take in a look in the back yard and this is what I found:

   That's our Mews...