Concrete day

Whew! I hadn't realized how weak I've become since my former concrete days. The floor isn't level. I shoveled the cement in, troweled it to what I thought were my marks on the sides, but I'm old and slow and by the time I got a level on it, it was too set up to work with. I may buy some of that floor-leveler stuff, or put a flat rock under a table leg, not sure yet. At least the chair should roll back and forth to the table when I'm done. It was just really a hot 96° this afternoon. Heat doesn't bother me if I'm not doing hard labor in it. Here's the floor about one/third done at noon, at which time I went to the house to eat lunch and take a nap. Without a nap, I knew I couldn't do any more work today.

At the end of the day I have it two/thirds done. Will finish it easily in the morning because the thickest part is done.

Putting plastic on it should help to keep it from drying out. I hauled between 50 and 80 gallons of sand up out of the arroyo to get this much done. I think I can finish with another 20-25 gallons. I carry half a 5-gallon bucket out at a time, then dump it into the wheelbarrow and roll it to the site. I don't keep a tally of the gallons, but usually use 15 to 20 gallons per batch mixed. So I not only don't remember how many gallons, but I don't remember how many batches I mixed either. That's why my estimate spans such a large gap.

Wanted to take some pictures of something else, anything else, today but the one time I saw a Two-tailed Swallowtail on a hummingbird feeder it was gone by the time I got to my camera. Some days it's hard to mix work and pleasure. Today the only mixing that got done was cement.