*I had a dream....that one day I would be gliding around on a sheet of ice in a perfect setting in my own  back yard: a warming house, a small deck with viewing area , lights strung along the white picket fence, Martha Stewart nearby offering little nuggets of advice on how to make this idyllic setting one that could truly make you weak in the knees.  Is that so wrong?

Well apparently it is.  Don't be fooled with the ostensible simplicity of this undertaking.  There's a lot of science going on, or not going on as was the case here.  First of all you should choose a very flat area, because of water seeking its own level and all.  To the untrained eye, my back yard appeared to be relatively level, but with some instrumentation I was able to determine that indeed the back side dropped off by about 18 inches.  In order to bring that side up to the level of the front, i laid in some hay and leaves.  Later I learned that this provided a wonderfully warm environment which prevented the ice from forming.  I removed the hay and leaves and found that the plastic leaked and was unable to retain the water.

All of this would have been moot if the ground had frozen, but with temperatures regularly in the forties and occasionally in the fifties, an ice rink is an unlikely result.

I did observe that in the places where the plastic covered the driveway ( the foreground of the above picture) the ice formed very nicely and would have only needed to be about an inch thick.  This of course leads one to the only logical conclusion: let's pave the back yard.  I offered to do it in green asphalt, but for some reason which can only leave you baffled,  my wife, Marianne, said no.  On the bright side, she said she didn't care what I did to the yard on the other side of the house.....maybe next year....