Here's Bob standing in the hole that we had to dig for that footing. It was fully four feet deep this morning. Filling it in was an odd exercise: sort of the punchline to a perverse joke as it feels like we just dug it all out. We debated filling the hole in exactly the way that the rocks and sand were originally striated... sort of environmentally sensitive, returning the earth to it's proper layers.
But of course we didn't do that. We just shovelled it all back in, willy-nilly. The piles we had lived with for a week or so vanished.
That's what it looked like at the end of the day, letting it set up overnight. Tomorrow we stack another few courses on. (Bear in mind that each of these blocks weighs 100 pounds.) Mixing the cement and mortar was fun; Bob and I agree it smells good. I also remember helping my mother build front steps at our house in Durham; the smell brought that back to me. (Plus the fun fact that we lived without real steps for years...) We're tired but satisfied that we've accomplished this much. I can help Bob until we get about chest high. Then a bigger, stronger friend is arriving- with scaffolding!- to help ascend to the roofline fifteen feet heavenwards. Thank goodness for crazy friends that don't mind hard work.
Here's another shot, down into the block which we filled with rocks and concrete.
It's a bit grey and beige, isn't it?
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