Djimbo Unchained

"Breaking big rocks into little rocks. Dat's what Djimbo do, all day, ever day.*"

So, you like our garden? It's really low-maintenance. Or at least it was, until we decided to break it up.

About one-third of the backyard was paved over with concrete (the other two-thirds is either bricks or weeds) and we never liked the concrete much. It's easy to care for, but tough for plants. On Saturday we finally worked up the ambition to rent a concrete saw and cut through the concrete in nice, straight lines, slicing off the parts we didn't want from the parts we wanted to keep.

(Concrete saws are interesting beasts, by the way. You want to keep a close eye on them, because anything that can cut through concrete will have no trouble with your ankles. Also, the big spinning blade makes a dandy gyroscope, so the saw refuses to move if you try to turn it. ("No, you walk around me. Got it?")

Side note on concrete-saw economics: The rent on the blade costs more than renting the saw itself. In effect, you're leasing the wear and tear on the blade, and the saw comes for free. Just FYI.

Anyway, once the slab was sliced, the fun began. Time to wallop on the sledgehammer. I busted off corners of the old concrete and Kathy hurled them into this pile. Whack, whack, whack, toss, toss, toss. Repeat.

That took up most of Saturday and Sunday. The next two days I finished off the job, breaking off the odd-shaped bits here and there. At one point, I uncovered a rusty pipe running across the yard and straight toward the house. I already know where the water supply pipe is, so this must be... the gas? Yikes! Don't cut through it!

Gingerly cleaning off the pipe while trying to remember the phone number for PG&E, it broke off in my hand and... nothing. No rotten-egg smell, no explosion. In fact, the pipe had already been cut about four feet further along. It might have been the water or gas pipe at one time, but thankfully was abandoned.

Now there's just the small matter of transporting all this ballast to the dump. But we're getting good at that.

*with apologies to Jamie Foxx and Samuel L. Jackson.