The Shade Palace

It's hazy, hot, and humid all over again.  For a few weeks, we did have a reprieve and the weather was beautiful.  My go-to project guy, Sam, built the lean-to off the back of the barn.  It was a little narrower and a helluva lot taller than I'd pictured, but it's great.  As he said, it's tall enough that I could park my truck under it with a full load of hay on it.

Here's the area before the build. It's the only place that has any shade during the hottest part of the day, except for inside the barn.  I wanted the boys to have a fresh air option.

 

 

The first order of business was digging some holes for post supports.  Sam learned exactly why this is called Stoneridge Farm.

 

 

Look at that piss-poor soil loaded with rocks.  This is why we can't dig into the ground around here by hand.  But don't you worry, I put that junky dirt to excellent use.

 

 

That's right, it was perfect for the alpine garden!  Sam bucketed over what he could and I only have some minimal filling to do at this point.  I was hoping to finish filling it this weekend, but the weather has gone back to unbearably hot and humid, so I'm pumping the brakes on outdoor chores for now. (That Sphinx statue just keeps moving around, but eventually will end up IN the garden, not perched above it.)

Back to the lean-to.   

Once the supports were in, Sam lost no time in getting the frame whipped up there.

 

 He had some gently used tin roofing that he recycled for this project, and close off the ends with some scrap T1-11 that between the two of us we managed to scrape up.

 He trimmed the roof edges and added some finishing touches, then snagged me a load of stone dust to use for the inside of it.

And thus my next focused task was born.  I needed to pull the vegetation and scrape the ground clean under the part of the lean-to that had been outside the fence originally, smooth it all out, dump the stone dust in there and level it.  Li'l Red was a huge help bucketing in the material, and then I would rake it by hand with a landscape rake.  

 

 After that was done, all that was left was to secure some pipe panels to the uprights, adjust the fence a little, and add one large helping of mule.

 

And there you have it, The Shade Palace.  I need to get my ten foot gate out of the pasture and put that on there, but for now a spare twelve foot panel will suffice.  This simple chore took me all day and I was dead exhausted by dinner time.  Fargo was so excited about his new digs at first, but once he realized there were no fans going, he went back into the barn...so I'm not sure if this was money well spent yet.