use warm water and warm sand when mixing mortar. i recycle the water used in cleaning my tools to mix mortar the next day and leave it in buckets overnight, but when it freezes overnight the icy water has to be dumped out and you have to use fresh water. you also have to spread the sand used for mixing mortar out in the sun if it freezes, because water in the sand will freeze it into icy sand chunks. you don’t want ice sand chunks in your mortar while you’re trying to lay stone!
in situations like today, when it’s going to warm up again right away, i will just 