Monday was the first day of our move. The movers brought all the stuff we have had in storage for years in anticipation of this house and put it into the barn.

When my father died, my stepmother gave me some of their furniture which did not fit into our current house, so this stuff has been waiting to be used for a long time.

I asked the graders if they could bring some of the big rocks down from the pile by the water tank and put them between the newly flattened yard by the library and the road going down to the pond. My idea is that these rocks would make it easier to distinguish the road in bad weather or at night.

They set three of them in the dirt for me. I will take a better picture showing the new rocks with the old ones and the Mexican sage next week.

This pile of dirt was hand carried out of the courtyard by my assistant and his helper. They were busy all day digging out a planting bed. After talking to my sister-in-law the previous Friday, I decided to enlarge the big bed, but digging it out generated a lot more dirt than Kai had anticipated, so my helpers had to carry it out where it got added to the grading.

Kai and his helper will level the courtyard, lay down crushed rock and compact it, then we are on our own. We will have to bring in soil for planting and some kind of surfacing for the courtyard. I will put more detailed info about the courtyard plan later, on the gardening page.

The front door was installed! This really excited me for some reason—maybe it was because this was just an open hole for so long.

You can also see the sconces on either side of the door. These came from a store in New Mexico which imports them from Mexico.

This is another fixture we have had for years in anticipation of this house. We got this one in Arizona years ago. I have seen these stars—sometimes called Moravian stars—on the internet for less, but forgot how wonderful this one was.

It has copper leading instead of the usual tin and the frosted glass means that you can put a any old light bulb in it and it will look pretty. Also, the glass won’t need to be spotless like it would if it were clear. This is important since it will be hung very high and will be hard to get to.

The graders were now putting in drainage. You see them here digging a ditch for the pipe from the north carport drain. There will be an area drain on either end of the carport, for the carport roof to drain into. The one on the south side drains through the new concrete by the back door.

Here, they have dug up to install an area drain in front of the library window. Our fancy copper canale roof drain will spout into this area drain, and all the water near the front porch will drain into it as well.

They will install the drain a few feet in front of the concrete pad and “tee” into the white pipe—which carries water away from the south carport drain and also the courtyard—and dumps it into the gully west of the driveway. This was the natural direction of the water before any grading was done to the site, so it is appropriate that it be channeled back into its normal flow.