The Bucket Brigade
It began as a description of a firefighting technique where manual passing of buckets was used to maximize water deployment to put out fires. It became a metaphor used to describe processes that are either highly manual or involve many individuals to mobilize materials from one place to another. For some reason, many of my efforts here on this hilltop seem to involve the actual or metaphorical use of a bucket brigade. I may have mentioned previously that Handy Brad is a Master Craftsman Tile and Stone Setter based on his forty years of work experience in the craft. I have now watched him through every stage of the deck tiling process and can attest to his expertise. I can also attest to the central role of the bucket in the process. The other workmen and I have a running joke about Handy Brad’s affection for his buckets. He is highly sensitive about other people using his buckets. Workmen are usually VERY proprietary about their tools. Each of my guys come to the job with big plastic snap-lock tubs that house their prized tools. They all know exactly where their tools are and they lock them up and usually drag them home every night. I might add that they tend not to treat my household tools (growing repertoire that they represent) with the same sanctity. But that’s OK, because not being a workman at heart, I tend to be less sensitive about the use of my tools…at least from one day to the next. But buckets seem to everyone to be more generic. Hammers or saws are used for one thing only, but buckets can be used by almost everyone for almost anything. And these are not even $10 items for the most part. They are mostly free PVC buckets which are collected after emptying of their intended material. They once held adhesive or grout or paint or some such thing.
Handy Brad spent the day today putting down high grade, quick-drying grout across about 90% of the tiling (the only part left ungrouted in the final tiling along the house wall where there will need to be some stucco repair on the base of seven columns that separate the doors and windows). Dave will do that flashing and stucco repair over the next few days, finishing on Tuesday at noon or so. The grout went down today so that the deck furniture can get put out tomorrow (it was all cleaned today by one of our other manual bucket brigades, the Mexican cleaning crew). By the way, I suspect that there might be a few new buckets added to Handy Brad’s collection from all the grout being used. Right now out on the deck beside my TV area I see seven of Handy Brad’s buckets. I watched him lovingly wash out each and every bucket at the end of the day, treating them like the precious tools he deems them to be. It seems that grouting requires putting it on then wiping it off, and then wiping it all off again to get the quick-drying residue removed before it hardens and leaves a film over the tile. We chose to use a blending parchment grout rather than a contrasting one. Now that I see the process and all the buckets needed to make it happen cleanly, I think we chose wisely.
I mentioned the Mexican cleaning crew, which was here today. They are led by Isabel, who was here for the first time in months since she has just now recuperated from a bad case of COVID, that involved being on oxygen for quite some time. Her young women arrive en masse in a minivan (I suspect supplied by Isabel) and they crawl over the house and outdoor areas (patio, deck and garage) and use one bucket after another to clean everything twice. Today we had two deck-related tasks; they cleaned all the deck furniture that has been gathering dust and cobwebs in the garage for four months, and they removed most of the floor protection (heavy brown cardboard taped down in the entry, living room and kitchen between the house doors and the deck doors). It actually is starting to feel like our home again around here and the Mexican female bucket brigade helped make that happen.
Tomorrow, Joventino and his helper (perhaps Sebastian) will be here at 7am for a full day of yard work that I will have to direct. Specifically, I have seven superbags holding ten yards of bark mulch sitting on the upper driveway. Joventino and Sebastian will do a full bucket brigade of this high quality mulch around the house to under the deck, where it will blanket that space and pretty up the freshly painted and vented under-deck. This has to be done one wheelbarrow or Gorilla Cart at a time, so there will, indeed, be a bucket brigade aspect to it. In fact, I have noticed that with mulch, which is generally less dense and therefore lighter, they often use large trash buckets to move the mulch and then spread it around on the grounds. Joventino always surprises me with how much work he can get done in a day. I expect him to have enough time to clear three meadows of about 2,000 square feet each to lay down wildflower seed for planting. If all of that doesn’t occupy his full day, I will tell him to spread the leftover mulch here and there, do some pruning and he’ll know what else needs doing around the property.
I have three buckets on the north side of the house that hold three different sizes of rocks. I almost cannot remember why I put those there, but it’s been a year and they seem to fit there even though I have almost no idea what they will ever be used for except the occasional addition to the top of a flowerpot (which it so happens I did just this week for the first time in a long time). So, maybe those buckets serve a purpose after all. I have garbage and recyclable buckets (one and two respectively) which we use every week to rid ourselves of all the cardboard boxes we get delivered each week. And then there are the four green buckets kept in the back of the garage. They are specifically for organic plant matter derived presumably from gardening or gardeners. They sit there most of the time unused and then get filled to the brim whenever Joventino comes over. There are also three or four green regular trash buckets (as opposed to the sort used by the waste company… ones that are made to be mechanically picked-up and emptied) that Joventino uses and I use to gather gardening detritus in the field.
So, buckets and bucket brigades abound on this hillside. I was told that the glass railing is being delivered tomorrow to the installers and they will install it on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning. With the furniture in place tomorrow and the glass railing up by Tuesday, we are ready for our houseguests that arrive on Tuesday afternoon. Not every last detail will be finished, but the deck will be functional and most importantly, the buckets will all be gone and hidden behind this wall or in this or that utility room. The bucket brigades will have done their work and we will sit back and enjoy the product of all of their labors.