More dirt gets dished, literally, as excavations and installations continue at the new seaside home for Thor and me.
NOTE: People have been asking to follow our progress as Thor and I pursue our quest for our dream home with sunsets over the Salish Sea. So starting with my post of 5/21/22, we set out.
Not the most glamorous part of building a new house, but crucial: Meshak and his crew have been moving a lot of dirt again. Above, the septic mound near the road at the east end of the long lot, which sadly the previous lease holder clear cut. We have a big blank canvas to plant once final grading, contouring, and smoothing happens. Meanwhile, more digging has ensued, including ditches for power and water connections. Below, digging a trench for power connection:
Ditches from the road to the house for power (gray) and water (white):
Thor and Bear dog inspect:
A lot of dirt:
The excavator needed to smooth out the south side and cover a previous ditch for pouring deck footings.
As long as the excavator was there, Meshak asked him to put on his narrow blade and dig a trench so Thor and I could plant a hedge. Emerald green arbor vitae were on sale at our favorite nursery, and Meshak even picked them up for us with his trailer. (Our contract doesn’t include any landscaping by builder.) He is a real mensch.
Thor and I got a workout dragging the plants to the edge, cutting the tightly-tied burlap loose, positioning, and filling in dirt. It feels good to contribute some actual physical work to our new home.
We are both still doing P.T. for various body parts, so we do take plenty of breaks for picnics or just gazing at the changing sea view with bird and sea creature dynamics. So far, we have spotted four migrating gray whales on their way north to Alaska. They forage and filter feed along shallow bottoms, then come up to spout and flash their flukes.
Next came this enormous pile of mulch. We are required to maintain the native plant buffer of 60 feet from the bluff edge (due to that previous lease holder clear-cutting), and we had to bring in a lot of mulch for bare dirt areas.
We had a bit of a glitch when the mulch truck got stuck in the mud at the edge of our yard. Meshak towed him out with his pickup.
This part of the buffer zone was plowed up for the drainage pipe running over the bluff edge (cleanout port is visible with yellow cap). Runoff from house and land are collected and funneled into the pipe landing on boulders below, as regulated by various government rules, to help stop erosion. New native plants and mulch:
And yet more mulch and plantings to expand the buffer zone after one of those regulatory agencies miscalculated the square feet required. We have often felt like Alice in Wonderland during the almost-year of negotiating various agency requirements and new requirements and, oh wait, one more requirement they just thought of — in order to finally be able to start building. We don’t mind using as many native plants as possible (we did that at our previous home), but it is kind of silly to imagine that our little patch is going to make a big difference in restoring nature, when all the other houses already along the bluff have lawns up to the edge. “Es la vida,” I learned when building a house in southern Chile. (“That’s life.”)
Coming up — more progress on the house itself, including the deck.
We realized that for an easy flow from the deck to the sea edge, we needed to add stairs on the west side (there’s another set along the south side, but not as direct). Meshak again accommodated us with this new set of stairs. (Railings to come.)
Weather has been alternating beautifully sunny with some cold and stormy days, but whatever the weather, we manage our walks. On Semiahmoo Spit two miles from our house, we enjoy the view of the rugged Canadian mountains as we collect pebbles to fuel Thor’s rock-tumbling obsession.
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You will find The Rambling Writer’s blog posts here every Saturday. Sara’s latest novel from Book View Café is Pause, a First Place winner of the Chanticleer Somerset Award and an International Pulpwood Queens Book Club selection. “A must-read novel about friendship, love, and killer hot flashes.” (Mindy Klasky). Sign up for her quarterly email newsletter at www.sarastamey.com
