After having spent a hectic summer
replacing the landscaping in my front yard and building a patio at Matt's house, I
quietly left California to return to Mexico on November 17, 2020,
just as covid-19 cases began to surge. The number of cases in
California and Mexico had been running neck and neck, but California
began to pull ahead as the weather cooled and people remained indoors.
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| Matt's Sauna |
My entire reason for returning home, in
the first place, had been
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| The Offending Tree |
to replace the fence between my house and my
neighbor's. We both had many projects to complete before we could
begin the fence. I got started, right away. My first task was to
remove a tree planted too close to the property line. The roots of
this tree had raised the otherwise intact walkway nearly a foot,
making it impossible to close the gate. There were also five tree
stumps remaining from trees that I had removed five years earlier. I
contracted someone to remove the tree and stumps. They removed the
tree but their stump grinder was out of order. There was a two week
delay while it was repaired. Then there was another two-week delay
when they realized they would need a ramp to get the grinder up the
front stairs (even through I had asked them repeatedly if this would
be a problem.)
Meanwhile, we took truckloads of junk from both our yards to the dump and built a patio and sauna at Matt's house. We also began the arduous process of removing my front lawn. The giant ash tree in my front yard had surface roots that had grown so large that it was impossible to mow over them. The city was constantly nagging me about my water usage, anyway, so it was time for the lawn to go. We dug two truckloads of dirt and sod out of my
front yard.
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| Front Yard with Lawn Removed |
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| Matt's New Patio |
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| Chipping Out the Concrete |
The other large project facing me was to remove and replace the damaged walkways. Originally, there was an
aggregate concrete walkway in the front and patio in the rear that
were joined by a flagstone walkway down the side of the house. The
front walkway had been partially raised by the tree roots and the
roots of the five trees I had removed in 2015 had made a mess of the
flagstone walkway. I decided to extend the replacement concrete
walkway all the way down the side of the house to meet up with the
rear slab. This required removing the flagstones. The quote for the
walkway was much greater than expected, so I needed to tackle the
removal myself.
The first two thirds of the walkway was
easy to remove. There was only a thin layer of concrete under the
flagstones and it was already broken into manageable pieces.
However, as I approached the rear, the concrete got thicker and
thicker. It was a good six inches thick at the back. Matt was
helping me but we needed to rent a jackhammer to break up the
concrete. The flagstones were salvaged for later use at Matt's
house, but we ended up hauling two tons of concrete to the dump.
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| The Giant Root |
The concrete contractor didn't want to
have to schedule two days for my job, so we had agreed that he would
remove the large root under the walkway after cutting out the raised
concrete. This root was much larger that expected, being nearly the
same diameter as the tree trunk. It took three chainsaws before they
were finally able to sever the root. A photograph of the root was
blacked out on Facebook for being a disturbing image. It had
certainly disturbed the concrete guys. In the end, they did a lovely
job of matching the existing concrete and I was finally able to walk
from the front of the house to the rear without risking a broken
ankle.
Once the new concrete was in, it was time to finish the front yard landscaping. We hauled six yards of pea gravel up the front steps from the street in buckets and wheelbarrows. We put in two sets of posts to hang hammocks, planted herbs and grasses along the walkway, and cleaned and mulched all the flower beds with red rubber mulch.
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| Matt Shoveling Pea Gravel |
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| The Finished Project |
Even with all my delays, I was done
with my projects by the end of September when we had originally
planned to begin fence construction. My neighbor, however, still had
not begun his projects. Covid-19 had delayed his contractor. He
finally did begin but, when November rolled around and he still had
not begun the paint job that would take several weeks, I finally told
him that I wasn't going to wait any longer. He admitted that he
wasn't going to get to the painting until the end of January, so we
agreed that he would have to handle the fence project alone. I
finally booked a flight to Mexico.
While I normally avoided flying
Southwest, I had heard that they were not filling middle seats, so I
elected to fly with them from Oakland to Phoenix and then on to Puerto Vallarta. I packed my mask, face shield, hand sanitizer, and
disinfecting wipes. I wiped down everything before I touched it in
the airport and planes. There was no one in the middle seat on the
flight to Phoenix and I had an entire row to myself on the flight to
Puerto Vallarta. With all my precautions, I felt relatively safe.
My housemate picked me up at the airport in Puerto Vallarta. It was
good to be home.
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| Sunset at Destiladeras |
