Why I Oughta...

Progress on the pizza oven MVP continues.  At least in terms of the hard surface part of the project.  Back ten days ago, I showed the first timber (6x6x8 treated ground-contact) being placed on site and talked about how much more excavation was required.  A few days ago, I posted a photo showing the three other timbers that I brought home from the lumber store that were ready to get placed for dry-fitting .  Now that I have the first four timbers on-site, I can start to see how much more excavation is required.  With the wall being about ten-inches-tall, that means that I would like to have about ten-inches of gravel behind the wall.  Thus, excavation is for the space required for the timbers to be square plus ten-inches in each direction.  Below is a look at the current state of the area:  All four timbers are on-site and I've been pulling away at the earth that needs to be retained: My plan is to use a flat shovel to create a clean edge in the...

I read this story in Country Living about some garden trends that they see emerging in 2019 and one of the items on their list caught my attention:  gabion-style walls. What the what?  I had never heard of those.  A quick search around the Web and I realized that while I had not heard the term "gabion-style walls", I've come across them.  And likely, so have you.   But just didn't know that's what they were called.  From the Country Living piece : See that metal cage holding the material in/together?  That's the defining characteristic.  More... From Gardenista : Derived from an old Italian word, gabbione, meaning “big cage,” gabions are enclosures that can be filled with any sort of inorganic material: rock, brick, or concrete debris. The cages were originally wicker, but now are usually a welded mesh made of sturdy galvanized, coated, or stainless steel wire that won’t bend when filled with rocks. In landscaping, gabion walls ...