Tuesday -- Shovelling In The Rain.

Rain on and off all day today; still raining on and off tonight. We need it. But I'm missing the sunny warm weather it has pushed out.

* * * * Back Door Project Update * * * *

This morning, with the help of Jack Spade, leaned the nearest big stone up onto its edge. Leaned it right up against the house, in front of the back door. Which meant the door wouldn't open without crashing the stone down again. Happily I managed to remember to go in and out the front door, partly because I tied a string across the back to remind myself, and the stone stayed put.

Oh, and we moved that radiator out of the way, too.

Had lunch with Mr. Spade. Then, he went on to bigger and better things, and I wheel-barrowed a mountain of gravel over in front of the leaning stone, and finally, when it seemed high enough, tipped the stone back down. It dropped nicely down onto the gravel, making a gravelly, solid good noise as it landed.

And of course it kept its one long edge, the one along the bottom of the house wall, firmly on the ground, and lay down slantingly on the back of the gravel pile. So the tricky part turned out to be how to lever up that buried back edge, since there wasn't any place to hook my tools under. There was a house wall in the way of any tool that might move the stone.

But it finally landed on top of all the gravel. I moved it in minute tiny steps, using a crowbar, various pieces of boards and bricks, digging fork, etc., and finally just pulling on it.

So now most of the big heavy stones paving the stoop are 7 or 8 inches higher than they were before, and hopefully the rest of the project will be moving smaller and more manageable pieces, and leveling things up, and so on. There's one more stone that's pretty big. But I have a plan for it.

Wait a minute. What was that I said before about plans?

Oh well. Great progress today.

And because of the rain, I have the muddiest pair of jeans ever, and a very wet hat.