We just moved into a new house. Fairly large, 2,500 square foot, two story house nestled (very tightly!) in a new subdivision in north San Antonio. The back porch is extra large and shaded by its own roof from the cruelly hot south Texas sun. This provides an absolutely lovely place to set up the hammock and relax on a breezy evening with a cold glass of white merlot and some tuneage; but, for fear of scorching the underside of the porch roof, it provides us no place to put the grill!
Anybody who knows anything about Texans, especially south Texans, knows the absolute imperativeness of BBQ at least once a week. Grilled skirt steak (fajitas), corn on the cob, asparagus dowsed in olive oil and lemon pepper, brauts, and all the other fixins that accompany such a cornucopia are as much a requirement for us as the thick humid air that keeps our terrestrial gills in working order. Now, you may wonder why we wouldn’t just put the grill right out there in the yard somewhere like people in places such as Missouri or Michigan do. What are we afraid of? That we might perspire if we have to stand in the sun? Do we have a phobia of grass? Nay, my foreign brethren (everybody NOT from Texas is a foreigner); The thing that deters us from spending too much time standing in one spot in our yards down here is a little thing I like to call Fire Ants. If you go to any house in San Antonio, step into the yard and stand still for more than a couple of minutes, a Fire Ant WILL climb onto you, find a bare piece of skin, and with great purpose, sting you repeatedly until you put it out of your misery. Though we South Texans have learned to live side by side with them to a degree, it has only been by accepting that the grass, any and all grass, is their territory. Hence our family’s need for a place to put the grill. The solution we came up with was to build a patio.
HOW TO BUILD A PATIO
Items Needed
One Long-Handled Flat Blade Spade
Two each 40 pound bags of course sand
One each 40 pound bag of crushed (or decayed) granite
Thirty three bricks
Your spousal unit, if applicable, and all the kids you got
Directions
1) Gather your family together and discuss the idea of making a patio for your BBQ or outdoor fireplace. If you don’t own a BBQ or outdoor fireplace, discuss getting one. As the father, husband, and guide of your household, ensure that the conversation ends up as all in favor of the project by using your experience, wisdom, and skills in gentle persuasion.
2) Set goals for the project. Procurement of the items can be a separate task from the actual building of the patio if need-be, due to time constraints.
3) Take all or as many as possible of the family on the outing to procure the needed items. Make sure to include the kids in on the process of deciding which sand, spade, and granite to purchase. Also, make sure you ask them if they can think of anything else you might need for the project (suggest gloves, bottled water, and other such amenities if no one else thinks of them ).
4) Upon arriving home, enlist the aid of the family to transport the items to the construction site. Be sure to feed everyone’s anticipation and excitement of the final product.
5) Upon undertaking the actual construction, assign tasks. You will need:
A waterboy/girl and general purpose gopher or two;
Someone to provide and maintain the background music;
Mud puppies (kiddos to help remove mud/dirt from the hole and to dig through clods already removed to find worms and grubs to study);
A surveyor (someone to help you measure and layout the patio boundaries)
Set all assigned personnel to accomplishing their tasks as needed
6)Using stakes (or screwdrivers, or any other item you can hammer into the ground), mark the corners of your patio. Once marked, re-measure to ensure that each side is 40 inches long.
7)Using the spade, dig the entire border of the patio’s foundation. Remove all dirt/clay to a depth of about 4 inches. Be sure to keep the entire hole’s bottom level so that as few dips or humps are present as possible. If need be, task the Mud puppies with putting some dirt back into low areas to even it out.
8)Once the hole is prepared, pour in both bags of sand and level out. Place bricks into the hole, ensuring that each brick placed is level with the ones adjacent to it. More than one person can perform the brick placement simultaneously, and in fact, this is recommended in order to lend a greater sense of accomplishment and participation to the group. Here is the pattern for the bricks:
9) When all bricks are in place, pour a large pile of the crushed granite at each opposite corner of the patio. Have all available hands rub and roll granite around on top of the patio until all crevices appear to have been filled. Save the remaining crushed granite for another time when the fill will have settled, revealing the need for another round of “filling the gaps”.
10) Instruct the waterboys/girls to bring refreshments to the other workers and themselves. Make sure the radio station selected is one that the majority enjoy, and break out the chilled blush for you and the spousal unit.
11) Chillax for a half hour, making sure that everybody gets praise for a job well done. Talk about how the patio will be used, imagining scenarios out loud and even planning as a group your first usage of it. Also, plant the thought of coming up with a next family project.
CONCLUSION
Few things promote such sincere togetherness and family unity as do joint projects, and this was no exception. So many good things came from this task...the cooperation, the sense of accomplishment, the planning and procurement skills, the practicing of the mindset to not be afraid of hard work, the sweat equity that everybody contributed and thus a stake in seeing it succeed, the exercising of love and patience, the overall feeling of ‘togetherness’ that was promoted; And more than that, the hope that this patio represents: the future memories we’ll all make out here BBQing as a family.
I just want to know what children in Texas do. How do they play in the yard? Isn't there any way to run the fire ants away?
Posted by Pearl on July 11, 2007 at 12:47 AM
Re: Promoting Family Unity
well, notice the key phrase that is a no-no regarding the grass is "standing in one place"...the kids keep moving, and they know what the mounds look like so they avoid them. Still on occasion they get stung anyway, though. As far as running them off...ha, you can poison a mound, but another will soon spring up somewhere else to take it's place. Fighting with the fire ants is a continuous battle that is never won. The best you can do is keep MOST of them away.
