Well, yesterday was the second day in a row with no rain so the patio was dry. I put a couple of finishing touches to it, a couple of bricks to cut and fit where things weren't perfectly square. Janet and I then began sweeping the polymerized sand into the cracks. I used 2 by 4s to divide the patio into manageable sections, usually 8 by 15 inch chunks more or less, two bags about per section. Once swept back and forth and back and forth I would set up another pair of boards to move over and then dump two more bags and leave Janet to get on with that while I shook the previously done section down with my packer. Then another brush over to top up the seams until we covered the nearly 50 feet. One final brush over and another packing of the entire patio. This is difficult because of the size, I used a bamboo stick like a cane to help orient my distance from house walls and patio edge and the like.
I just got well tucked into sweeping off any residue so it doesn't stick and dirty the bricks when a sudden, and I mean sudden snow flurry struck just around 8:30 last night. I couldn't keep ahead of it with my big shop vac and had to give in. There has been an inch and a bit of wet snow over everything all night. There shouldn't be much of that sticky sand on the bricks but I won't know until the snow is gone and it is a bugger to get off. I shovel the patio off over the winter so perhaps the scraper will clean it up before spring. All I needed was another hour or less! The snow should be gone by tomorrow so I should be able to pick up the junk I left on the lawn then. I hope to lay a bit more retaining wall before the final snow arrives for the season but it is cold and wet now so might not get all that done. Usually permanent snow arrives to stay around Remembrance day, November 11. We don't get much useable weather though from now on and some of that is needed to remove leaves and other garden clean-up. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
