This morning is a gusty, wet introduction to autumn. All of the little red and yellow leaves that have been hiding up in the canopy have been driven to the earth and amassed themselves in rusty-colored piles on roads, lawns, and decks throughout the town. Just like that, my brain processed that summer is over. A few red swamp maples in the wetlands by couldn’t do it. Some yellow patches in the upper branches of sugar maples didn’t do it, either. No, not even the appearance of apples at roadside stands and a gift of fresh cider from a neighbor did it. None of these things were strong enough to make me start my personal transition into fall. It took this morning--a chill, blustery wind laced with a cold rain, carrying with it the hints of colors to come--to adjust the settings on my internal clock. Now I can put away the shorts and sandals, and dig out the sweaters and heavy socks. It’s a sad farewell to fresh tomatoes, but a warm welcome to hearty soups and stews. Transitions are funny—some come gradually, and some occur at the drop of a hat (although if it happens too quickly, can it still be a true transition?). At any rate, it’s time to pull up the tomato plants in the blue containers on the porch, and shake the seeds out of the morning glory vines and store them for next year. Autumn is here.
The luxury of autumn is mornings like these, where there is no guilt in sitting with a cup of tea and writing for an hour or so. Later today, or tomorrow even, will be time enough for work. Today is not fit for framing. However, excavators seem not to mind at all.
Phil and his crew are working hard at the site this morning, trucking in sand and gravel to continue backfilling the foundation. This essentially means creating the proper grade up to the foundation walls. It also means the end of our moat, and the plank bridge of dubious construction we have been using for the past month. Fare the well, dear bridge, you will not be missed.
Prior to backfilling, the foundation drains are installed, which is a simple matter of laying a perforated pipe around the perimeter of the foundation walls. It is sloped in such a way to carry any water that seeps through the ground away from the house and through another pipe that travels a fair distance away before coming out to daylight and shooting the water down the hillside. These guys have been at it for a few days now and with every truckload of sand I am amazed at how little it fills. The truck is big (at least to my eyes), and it dumps a huge (at least to my eyes) pile of sand and then rumbles off to get another. Meanwhile, the excavator picks up sand in its bucket and drops it precisely where it is needed. I do not know how many piles we have been through, but by end of day yesterday the backfilling looked about half-way completed (at least to my eyes—that’s the last time I’ll say that, I promise).
I have spent the last few days building box-beams for the first floor. I will explain this in a bit more detail next entry, when I have some pictures to illustrate my needlessly wordy explanations. For now, know that it involves a huge amount of measuring, cutting, assembling, and nailing. If the weather was more suitable, we would be installing those beams today. Hopefully we can get them in place by tomorrow.
A funny surprise (not exactly ‘ha-ha look at the clown funny,’ more akin to a ‘holy crap, what the hell is going on here if I don’t laugh I might cry’ funny) occurred on Thursday. I drove up to the hillside and saw some boxes scattered here and there, and then saw some windows, and then spied a few doors. I quickly realized that these were not only the doors and windows for the house, but the kitchen cabinets as well! Now, I like to think that we are moving along at a nice steady pace, but two weeks is not a lot of time between your first shipment of framing lumber and your next shipment of kitchen cabinets. I called First Day and was reminded that I knew the dates of all shipments, which I did, so the blame is mine. But the difference between a penciled-in notation on a calendar and the reality of over 12 piles of tarp-covered lumber scattered throughout a tight building site is vast. I had no clue where this stuff was going to go. Somehow, we found a place, and everything is safely stowed away, awaiting its time of deployment.
Finally, I have heard a few interesting birds while working. Most mornings, I hear a loon calling as it flies overhead to one of our many near-by lakes. If you have never heard a loon call, well, you should do everything you can to hear one. It is magic. I also heard a barred owl yesterday. It gave a two-note performance, and then gave no more, no matter how hard I called for an encore.
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