June 15, 2007—We start to get wired

Today was a pretty quiet day. There was no crew here except for the electricians, who were working on the wiring in the guest cottage. That doesn’t photograph very well, so I didn’t take any pictures, but here is a picture of the barn with the south sided stained.

The painters finished everything except the foundation and the little piece of wall below the shed roof and its fascia, which you can see above the south side wall. They will be back to give the barn its second coat of stain after the battens are put on, so they can finish those areas then.

Meanwhile, the electricians will finish the wiring in the guest cottage and the move on to the barn.

Here is one more picture of the upstairs in the barn, looking toward the west where my office will be. If you look closely, you can see a little temporary desk between the two windows, that Kai has put up to lay the plans out on.

I bought tile today for the bathroom floor. It is all in boxes, so I can’t show a picture of it until we use it, but it is very attractive 12x12 tile which is glazed to look like creamy terra cotta pavers. The best thing is, that I got it for $.99 a square foot! It will be about the same color as the plywood on the floor now—a nice warm tan.

I also bought the sink, faucet and shower faucet for the guest cottage—a busy day!

I promised more pictures of the property, so here are some portraits of the pond. It looks very pretty right now, but the cat-tails are actually not desirable at all.

It has an amazing ecology all of its own—the only part which we contributed was the 5 chinese-take-out style cartons of mosquito fish!

There are all kinds of aquatic weed, snails, frogs, insects, birds and plants, that have somehow found their way to the pond. Amazing.

Here is a side view of our excellent dock. It is wood on metal piers and is big enough for a party. Behind it, you see the gully which carries the water to fill up the pond in the winter. If you look below the gully at the pond, there is a large stand of tulles. They are growing out of a slide which happened two years ago during a torrential rain, which blew out drainage system for the gully. Before then, the water came down the gully, flowed into a silt pond and then through a pipe into the big pond. The silt pond above the pipe filtered out most of the dirt. Unfortunately, a very heavy rain during our rainy winter in 2006 overwhelmed the system pushing rocks and dirt into the pond, and now water goes directly into the pond, dirt and all. Eventually, we will have to deal with it, but it will have to wait until we have time.

Here is a great view of the pond looking across the dock. The water seems to be evaporating at an alarming rate. Although it has been dry spring, the pond was full to the overflow pipe earlier this year.

We can fill it from our lower well, but I hate to do that if we can avoid it. I will only do it later this year if it looks like the animals will suffer if we don’t refill.

The cut in the hill oposite the dock is where the keyway for the dam was cut. A keyway is a slot dug into the hill which the dam is built into. Building the dam into the hill strengthens the ends of the dam, which would be a weak place if it were not knitted into the structure of the surrounding land.

This is Jim’s birthday boat. It is a great little tender—probably over-kill for our little pond—but very cool to have.

Someday, I can envision rowing around and working on my aqua-culture garden. I will have to get serious and learn about water gardening before I do that. I have seen a pond where the natural ecology seems to keep it clean and algae free. Supposedly, you can engineer this by introducing the right flora and fauna. We will see. At least this year, there seems to be less algae and more other plant life in the pond.

This picture and the one below are of native rock we used to rock the roads. The grading contractor had a piece of equipment which could sift gravel and rock out of dirt. During the grading process to build the dam, we discovered that the knoll next to the pond and the area below the pond were composed of dirt and crushed rock. He sifted tons of dirt so we could use this native rock on the road rather than bring in rock.

I find it very beautiful. What you are looking at here is a volcanic bubble. The gray part of the rock in the middle is either a void in the rock which filled with sediment and petrified or a small glob of lava which solidified—which, I am unclear from what the geologist said.

Here is some more of the rock. Most of it is permeated with these rusty lines which give each rock a unique look. Some of them look like eyes or targets, some of them look like landscapes. It’s fascinating.

Once you start looking at them, it’s hard to stop. I have brought home hundreds, and everyone who comes here ends up picking up one or two.

This area is just west of the pond and will one day be my rose garden. Luckily, the soil in this area seems to be in pretty good shape. About 30' was taken off the top of this knoll to build the dam, so any black clay is long gone. I sent out for a soil analysis and got back a report which tells me the type of amendments I need to add to the soil—mostly nitrogen—to make it a good place to grow roses. I hope to do that soon, then till it, then sheet-mulch. Sheet-mulching is a process where you lay wet paper or cardboard over the ground and cover it with something organic—such as straw. Straw degrades very slowly and eventually the cardboard and straw turn into dirt and you add another layer of organics and put a new layer of mulch on top.

Here is the gate at the top of the dam. My helper has been working on painting it all day long. It is the same color as the shed, water tank and barn, but sure looks lighter. I hope the paint will stick ok after all his work. We degraded the finish on the gate with vinegar before painting, but I am not sure that did the trick. We will see.

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