![\"Zanthan](\"http:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/photos\/320\/SummerHouse5.jpg\")
2007-05-09. A 3×15 foot section is topped up with about 2 feet of good dirt from the original vegetable garden. I had just moved part of my mountain of mulch here and now the dirt is on top of it. Perhaps the worms will sort that out.<\/i><\/p>\n
I’m really too tired to write, so this may be incoherent. On Monday, digging the trenches for the concrete foundation beams commenced. You’d think we were building a skyscraper. The old shed\/garage (which stood for almost 60 years) was built on a 4 to 12 inch slab, depending on the slope of the hill. The trenches along the edges of our new walls are 3 feet deep and the slab itself about a foot deep. I didn’t realize that the new concrete foundation would be so deep, so much more engineered than the old one. We’re nothing if not safe in the 21st century.<\/p>\n
Now that I’ve seen the enormity of it all, I wonder, was pier-and-beam construction ever an option? I assumed not because of the existing slab. I didn’t understand that it probably could have been removed more easily than all this dirt.<\/p>\n
Day 1. Monday.
\nWe couldn’t get (by that I mean, I wouldn’t allow) any heavy equipment into my backyard and so all the digging has to be done by hand. As the dirt comes out, I get to direct where it goes. I marvel at having two men to move dirt around. Mounds of good black dirt begin filling various depressed areas of my yard. I rake and dig and take out rocks and throw them back on the fill pile.<\/p>\n
2007-05-09. A 3×15 foot section is topped up with about 2 feet of good dirt from the original vegetable garden. I had just moved part of my mountain of mulch here and now the dirt is on top of it. Perhaps the worms will sort that out.<\/i><\/p>\n
Then we hit caliche. And there’s no place for that<\/strong> anywhere in the garden. Wherever some drops it forms an instantly impervious layer. Yikes! We start to dump it on the west side of the little house, but that is uphill and will only compound the existing drainage issues.<\/p>\n Day 2. Tuesday. Ivan suggests building some sort of sculptural mound of dirt on the back lawn, like a big gum drop. . tentatively agree and then discover that it blocks the carefully made view of the south border from my bed. And it gets caliche all in the lawn.<\/p>\n We are running out of places to put dirt.<\/p>\n Day 3. Wednesday A lovely rain about 10:30 pm–not enough to make things mucky or fill up the trenches.<\/p>\n
\nA third man is added to the digging crew. Caliche is piled on the lawn and in the back where it will cause further drainage problem before we decide that this won’t do.<\/p>\n
\nWe solve the caliche problem by deciding to haul it away. The men dump a mountain of it on the driveway. I spend most of the day dismantling the sculptural mound and trying to get caliche out of the lawn.<\/p>\n![\"Zanthan](\"http:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/photos\/320\/SummerHouse4.jpg\")
2007-05-09. More good dirt is piled on the low end of the lawn. I’ll probably take out that tree…where I let a fallen cedar elm sprout out of the old trunk.<\/i><\/p>\n
![\"Zanthan](\"http:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/photos\/320\/SummerHouse7.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Zanthan](\"http:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/photos\/320\/SummerHouse8.jpg\")
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