It’s late. I’ve had friends over to dine and drink and walk down to the theatre to see the company’s improv troupe, which was not at all bad. Some real talent there. I’d like to see their “best of” guys do a show.

After Coriolanus rehearsal this morning, I worked on laying out the rest of the labyrinth, always excepting the outer ring on the north side, where I must build up the soil to be more level.

You will notice that I have modified the plan I’ve been working with. Rather than the curved lines I’ve been using, I’ve used the more geometric form usually found in drawings and indeed in my tattoo. Naturally this is easier to lay out than cutting stones to fit curves. However, I’m not sure I like it better. I may try changing the switchbacks to the curved version I’ve been working with.

At any rate, now I have to get many truckloads of topsoil brought in, then fill in the whole pattern with the soil, then plant grass seed, water it, etc. I may actually have a completed labyrinth in time for the Annual Meeting of the Lichtenbergians.

Of course, to get the soil moved in, I have to get rid of the 1972 Mercedes-Benz that has been parked for three years in the only space I have available for dumping of soil.

Even in the time it took to move the laptop from its position over by the outdoor speakers to beside my chair in the labyrinth, the light has vanished. It is dark. The fire is warm. How many more nights will I have to sit out here comfortably by the fire?

Anyway, here’s my thought for the day: it’s not finished, it’s not finished.

The astonishingly geometric arcs of the top half of the labyrinth stop short in a field of mud. I have to use a wire brush on my boots every time I want to go into the house. I got the other 3,000 pounds of stone moved this afternoon in record time, but it sits there in a cenotaph, unfinished.

There are only two weeks remaining before an audience sits down in a park to watch Coriolanus. It is not finished.

I keep seeing graphic images of music in my head. None of it is even started, much less finished.

The fire in front of me glows but does not flame. It is not finished.

The Ruby Red vodka tonic next to me shifts its ice in the dark. It is not finished.

My life, though wonderful in many regards, even enviable, is not finished.

The Innovation in its finished state:

Here’s a long shot:

Cat is not integral to The Innovation.

Anyway, I laid out the rest of the top half of the path:

I stopped on that outer outline; I’ve decided to build up the ground there so that the whole thing is more level. Ginny of course is appalled that nothing lines up and that it’s not as smooth as a parterre.

And finally, I used what remained of the stones to begin laying out the northeast quadrant:

You can see where I’ve scratched out a successive approximation of the rest of the course in the dirt. You can also see a couple of double-decker stones; that’s where I’m going to have to cut stones in order to make them fit into the curve. Still no solution for that.

And here is more Cat:

So, having used up all my stones, I will now wait patiently until the next pallet is delivered on Friday. Yes, class, this is what a ton and a half of stone looks like.

So I went and rented this:

Self-powered, huge, mama-jama rototiller. And it still couldn’t cut through the dry, hard-packed soil. I had to park it for a couple of hours while I watered the yard. That worked. I still was having problems getting it to dig in, instead of running away from me, until I figured out there was this little extendible bar between the rotoblades that I needed to lower so that it would actually drag through the soil and slow the machine down and get the blades to catch.

Then it was tutti all the way, as Prof. Peter Schickele says. By supper time, I had tilled the whole circle and raked it flat. It’s still a bit dicey on the far edge, where it dips down the slope, because when you rake tilled soil, all the vegetable matter ends up at the end of your raking, so that whole outside path on the northern side is for the moment a mite spongy.

Anyway, here’s what it looks like:

Those who saw it in person may be able to tell how much more of a plane the surface is now. My main goal was to even out the bone-jarring dip in the southwestern quadrant (to the left in the photo above). That has been accomplished. I’ll decide whether to build up that northern arc to be level with the rest of the yard as I go along.

Next: the excitement of using my new cutting tool thingie to begin cutting the stones for the center circle. Actually, the next exciting thing is to get that huge tiller loaded back into my van. A big thank you to Marc and Galen for providing the extra muscle necessary for that.

It was decided at last night’s Lichtenbergian contemplation of the labyrinth that I would outline the paths instead of paving them. Much easier and cheaper.

It was also suggested that instead of digging a trench into which I would set the stones, I should lay out the labyrinth and then bring in truckloads of new topsoil and just shovel it into the labyrinth, leveling the ground with the stones. I could then plant grass in the new soil.

This morning I removed all the stones except the center. My next step will be to draw the circle on the stones and find someone who can cut those for me.

Then I have to find a topsoil supplier who can get a truck through my carport.

Excelsior.

No work on the actual labyrinth, of course, because I’m waiting for the Lichtenbergians to contemplate and decide how I should proceed.

I did continue reclaiming the brick edging, however, and that led to some surprising results:

You can see the edging clearly here, and even more amazingly, you can see a whole lot more of the yard!

Until this afternoon, the ivy and growth covered everything up to the labyrinth itself. I cleared away five or six wheelbarrows full.

I was just minding my own business, digging up the bricks (behind the tree in the photo), when all of a sudden the next brick, instead of curving to my left and cutting straight towards you in the photograph, headed straight for the ivy.

I sort of liked all the undergrowth and was hesitant to clear it out, but neither did I want to leave all those bricks unclaimed. Finally I decided to go for it and tear everything out.

I discovered ferns that I had planted years ago, still bravely putting out a couple of fronds. I discovered our cat Miranda’s grave. I discovered, as you can see in the photo, that my original layout for the labyrinth cut directly across the outward curve on the left of the photo.

Not a problem, I thought to myself, since my calculations yesterday indicated that the labyrinth would in actuality be smaller. I got out a measuring device to see exactly how much smaller, and that’s when I discovered that, no, actually, my original plans were quite accurate. Feh.

It’s not really a problem. When I begin actually laying the stone, I’ll move the border.

All in all, a lovely day: beautiful weather, and I successfully avoided working on anything important.

I spent yesterday afternoon playing with the labyrinth, laying out some stones to see how to proceed.

On one half, I paved the path. You can see already that it’s going to require a lot of cutting and fitting. I would probably have to acquire a saw capable of cutting curves, since the center is supposed to be a circle. Of course, I could settle for a table saw to make straight cuts, which would be most of the cuts I’d need, then find someone who could make the dozen or so curved cuts for me.

The cost would be unconscionable as well. I can’t really justify spending what I spent on this one pallet three more times. The stones you’ll see in these photos are about half the pallet!

The time factor is negligible. I quite enjoy getting to work on it, and it is certainly Lichtenbergian in its time-wasting potential. So what if it takes me over a year to complete it? It’s not San Simeon, but it will do.

Here’s another shot of the paved paths. There would be a certain grandeur to covering my back yard in 6″ paving stones, to be sure. I’d essentially be creating a patio, wouldn’t I?

It also would be better, as Mike pointed out in comments previously, to have a stone path for barefoot walking. It would be a lot easier to sweep acorns, twigs, and pecans off the stone path than try to get them out of grass or mulch.

You can see in this shot how many curved cuts would be needed over on the center.

Design note #1: See where the outline comes down and stops at the turnaround at the bottom of the photo? In a perfect world, I’d run power under this thing and have an embedded light at the endpoints of the outline, something like a glass sphere lit from underneath. There are four of these endpoints.

Design note #2: Here we are at the center. I spent some time yesterday clearing away debris and vines from the pile of bricks over in the corner of the yard, because it dawned on me what a good design resource they’d be here. Here I’ve placed bricks on the four cardinal lines of the compass. Notice I’ve left the center blank. I’m going to have four more stones there, with a circle cut out. I’ll dig a hole in the center and put a bowl in it, black, maybe blue (yes, with drainage holes). The circle stones will overlap the bowl, and there in the center of the labyrinth we’ll have a nice omphalos. It might be interesting to fill it with water, for example, or to have a candle in it. Again, in a perfect world, we could place lights under the rim.

No matter whether I pave the paths or pave the outline, I’m going to have to have the curved cuts made for the center stones, just because the center has to be round. Why? Because I said so.

Design note #3: I decided I could break up the endless gray path with quick bands of brick.

I could do that every x number of feet, which, given the topology of the path, would look random, or I could do it in some pattern.

At the moment, I’m thinking I’m going to do it on the western axis, those great back-and-forth sweeps that form the visually uninterrupted arc of the top half. (The bottom half gets all tumultuous with switchbacks.)

Even if I don’t pave the paths, I could do the brick inserts in the path as a design thing.

After all I got all the stones laid out, it was still early and I was enjoying being all sweaty and semi-naked in my shorts, so I went to uncover the brick edging around the back of the yard. Didn’t know there was brick edging? That’s because it’s been covered with an inch or so of dirt and over grown with ivy. Like the brick walkway up top, it’s not hard to reclaim, although it’s a little more work than the walkway because I have to get rid of the ivy as well.

Here’s the other half of the labyrinth, where I paved the outline.

There’s a lot that’s appealing about this approach. First, the expanse of green is soothing, although of course in the winter it wouldn’t be green.

Second, it would be dead easy to accomplish. I could rent a trench digger and be done in a couple of days, rather than a year and a half.

Notice how the entire labyrinth will be slightly smaller than my spray-painted guidelines. That was a quick and dirty layout just to see if the whole thing would fit, which it just did, barely. It’s good that it will come in by a foot or two.

Now to the problems with this approach. As I’ve mentioned repeatedly, keeping the path clear would be a bitch. We’d just have to accept that sandals are permissible for barefoot walking.

Getting grass to grow in the back yard has always been tough, although I’ve never really put any concentrated effort into it. Consultation is called for. I know, though, that we’re talking a lot of tilling and amending of soil even to get started. (I’m going to have to till the whole area anyway, in order to level out some of the irregularities.)

Also, with a paved path, mowing the outline would be easy: just follow the outlines, and the mower just scoots along on the path. Mowing the path, however, would be more of a problem, since the lawnmower is wider than the path. I’d have to make sure the whole thing is level, so I could try to mow over the whole thing. My experience with my brick edgers, however, suggest that this doesn’t really work.

Keeping the weeds at bay with paved paths would be easier as well: just spray Round-Up on the paths. Keeping the outlines weed-free would be a lot harder.

So, I have choices to make. Next weekend, perhaps.