May I say? I am extremely proud of myself. Look!!! I built that low-rise AND relatively level stone wall with my own hands... inexperienced but, gloved... and constructed without cement. But boy, it sure was hard to find square stones. I had to rummage through the pile of left-over rocks piled for future use for what seemed like too much work for little reward. All the good, square & solid ones had been used for the major cement & stone retaining walls we built at the end of summer. One, if you will remember, even has an attached swimming pool for fish.
Now, invigorated by my bravura, I feel confident to tackle the repair of a couple of runs of meter-high stone walls, damaged by our torrential rains... from August right up to Christmas Day... and by the negligence of the work-guys... tugging cement mixers without looking ahead or, behind. In my mind, our builder ought to have repaired the ruined walls, however, I did happen to win the toss during the negotiations for paying the extras we had insisted upon. So, I let their reconstruction go. I can handle the challenge I thought I'd leave to the work-guys to do. Oh! And as a stone-wall-builder, I am in fine company. Winston Churchill learned how to build rock walls for the house he had bought in Kent. His garden is littered with his efforts. However, he liked to use mortar, whereas, I go for the au naturel variety. Sorry, I know that's French but, the Italian sounds so stupid. Anyway... Churchill seemed to think it was as therapeutic as knitting and a lot less frustrating. He could still puff on his cigar. Wall-building is manly. Gosh.
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