Rain, Rain, Go Away

This is what I have learned about building a house so far:

Just when you think everything is finally starting to move along, something unexpected will happen to throw a monkey wrench in the works. Or if not a monkey wrench, perhaps a unseasonal storm. Or two. Or ten.

Yep, because we are building a house, we have had the wettest couple of weeks that anyone can remember. Seems that the Weather Gods enjoy messing with construction schedules. They toss a torrential rain here, a wallop of hail there, and look how the ant-like humans scramble! What fun to create a domino effect of delaying a concrete pour, so that the framers also get delayed, and the backfilling can't happen, and so on, ad infinitum.

Not only do said gods enjoy the delays that makes us puny humans tear our hair out, they also get quite a giggle out of causing damage wherever they can, like to our poor roughed-in road.

Rain + cement trucks = one very sad, sad road.

This is what our road looked like after the cement guys tried to make it up to the site, slid all over the place, then gave up and went home. Not a pretty sight!

The scouring rain also sent many tons of sediment washing down into our not-quite-finished culvert/drainage trenches, which will now need to be dug out all over again.

But wait: the Weather Gods  had another trick up their sleeve: HAIL! Oh my goodness, when Nevada skies get to hailin', they don't hold back. Most hail storms I have seen in other places were brief, but the one we got last week had some serious staying power, taking its sweet time while pelting our sage and pinion world with a thick layer of pea-sized ice balls.

This was the Eveready of hail storms...it kept going, and going, and going...

I could only imagine what a hellish tattoo the horses were enduring at the barn, which has a metal roof that is loud even when it rains. Knowing my boys, they probably scooted out of the barn as soon as the hail started to fall, preferring to get pelted rather than stay put in such a thunderous and scary racket.

Fortunately, even a freakishly long string of storms must eventually come to an end, and when it did, the site got busy again. Yesterday, I got to watch as the concrete for the stem walls was poured, which was very cool to see. The concrete gets pumped through a big tube carried by a huge, articulating boom that can easily reach across the entire site.

The concrete boom reaches for a far corner.

One guy controls the boom with a wireless joy-stick set-up, which required great concentration to keep it moving and in just the right position. See kids, playing all those video games IS applicable to employment in the real world!

This fellow (who calls himself "Butter" -- I kid you not), controlled the boom, a very precise job.

The guy on the other end aims the tube as it shoots wet concrete into the forms, which have a slot in the top just for this purpose.

Other guys then come along and stuff the concrete down with their gloved hands, while another walks along banging a hammer on the sides of the forms, all aimed at eliminating any air pockets inside the forms.

The concrete production line.

There was also some catch-up work to do with the footings that had not gotten poured on the day the trucks could no longer make it up the road.  I got to watch this, too, and was impressed by the care and finesse that went into creating smooth and level surfaces for the footings.

Smoothing the footings.

Speaking of smooth and level, it really was amazing to see how precise all of this work has been. Michael explained to me that it is extremely important for the foundation work to be spot on, according to the plans, as any mistakes or lack of evenness in the foundation can cause serious problems for everything that gets put on top of it. For this reason, the entire site was carefully marked and measured using bright string.

Marked and measured form showing the slot on top for concrete and the string that criss-crossed the whole site.

Then, just when we thought the sky would be blue and beautiful for days to come, some clouds formed up out of nowhere and started to spit -- at the precise moment that we were trying to get the last concrete truck up to finish the stem wall pour.

Where the heck did these come from?

Fortunately, we got lucky, with the rain staying too light to be of any consequence. Phew! We caught one small break at least.

So, now we are hoping that Roberto's crew gets the wooden forms off in time for Jason to do the backfilling, which is supposed to happen tomorrow afternoon. We thought the forms were coming off today, but when I went up to check this evening, they were still there. Sigh.

The framers are supposed to start on Monday -- that will be really amazing to watch! Floor joists first, then walls will start to sprout up, giving the whole thing a new sense of reality.

Meanwhile, we at least know that we are really and truly a construction site now -- because we have a Port-o-Potty on site!  No more peeing behind a bush for our hard-working crews.

All the comforts of home!

And, they should be extra grateful that they won't have to go tromping off behind the bushes these days, as the warmer weather we are getting has started to bring out the rattlesnakes.  Michael found this one in the driveway of our rented house just the other day:

Not a fellow you want to meet when going to answer "nature's call"!

While the rattlers are not a welcome sight, we are starting to see the very welcome return of larger numbers of wild horses, many of whom go off to parts unknown for several months in late Winter/early Spring.  We had a herd of about a dozen behind our yard today. You can see them by clicking on the video below:

And, check out the off-the-charts cuteness of this little girl, who was born to a small band we call "The Simpsons", after the cartoon family. The rather homely mare is Marge, the stallion is Homer, the filly born last year is Lisa, and this baby girl is (naturally) Maggie. Had she been a boy, she would have been Bart -- maybe next year will see the family complete! We were all surprised that Marge gave birth to such a colorful and pretty baby...we hope Maggie takes more after her daddy than her mom in terms of conformation, as poor Marge is the epitome of poorly put together.

Baby Maggie, as cute as they come.

I have taken pictures of baby Maggie twice now, and it has been very sweet to see what her older sister does when she thinks someone is possibly a threat to baby sis. Lisa, who has always been afraid of people, making herself scarce if you come anywhere near her, will now march right up to me fairly close, putting herself between me and Maggie. I can see real fear in her eyes -- she is still just as scared of people as she ever was -- but she is willing to put herself at risk to protect Maggie. 

Meanwhile, their momma, Marge, couldn't care less, as she is rather over-acclimated to humans. It was Marge, in fact, who gave me my very first wild horse encounter soon after I moved here. She was in our front yard with Homer and Lisa, who was a small baby then herself. When I went out to take her picture, Marge walked right up to me and sniffed my hand, hoping I might have some sort of treat for her. This is not supposed to happen -- it is illegal to feed the wild horses, but lots of people do, creating this "semi-tame" kind of scenario we see with Marge. 

Marge with baby Lisa last Fall, in front of our rented log house.

Well, that's all for the moment, folks. More next week when the framing starts!

Love to all.

On Solid Ground

Hoser. Spritzer. Divine Queen of the Water Spirits. Whatever you want to call me, I finally got to be useful on the building site. My job, for several days, was to man (or woman) the hose to get and keep the base material for the pad perfectly moist. The stuff starts out rather like a gritty powder with bits of gravel in it, but in order to compact it into the concrete-like base one wants for the building pad, you have to wet it. A lot. But, if you wet it too much, it turns into a muddy slurry that makes a big, useless mess.

Fortunately, learning just how much to spray the stuff down as Jason was mixing it around and spreading it with the backhoe was not rocket science, though it did take a surprising amount of concentration. You might think that standing there hosing down base material for hours at a time would be mind-numbing, especially on that first day when it was cold and actually spitting snow while I was out there. However, I found myself watching the machine like a hawk, trying to figure out exactly where Jason was going and  how much to spray at every moment. My muscles got tired from holding the hose out in front of me for so long, but it was actually great to be able to contribute something useful to the physical creation of the house.

This was me as I appeared (in my own mind) while watering the base material.

Okay, maybe this was how I actually looked. This was the day it snowed!

My contributions, however, paled in comparison to the herculean and brutally physical tasks Michael took on on his "days off" that weekend. There was the weighty job of spreading the base material after Jason dumped it...

Then there was the bone-shaking, arm-numbing, painstaking task of compacting the material, which is done with a heavy, hand-operated machine that basically jumps up and down and smashes down whatever is underneath it.

The compactor -- a job not for the weak!

Besides the grunt work, Michael also helped out by measuring the depths of all the different areas of the pad with the precision equipment Jason has for that purpose. Naturally, Michael knows how to use all of these things!

Of course Michael knows how to use complicated surveying equipment! Doesn't everyone?

The upshot of Michael doing all this work (and me doing my little part) was that Jason took it all into account and charged us much less than we had expected. Other than his son, who came up and helped here and there, he didn't have to bring in any outside laborers, so that saved us a bundle.

I have to say that the finished pad was a thing of beauty: smooth, even, and rock solid. Nothing like the evil, squishy, peanut-butter clay that was there originally!

Michael standing on the finished pad, approximately where the mud room will be. That's our little ATV on the right.

The next step was to get the concrete guys up there to do their thing. They started on Tuesday putting together all the forms for the concrete footings. The head guy's name is Roberto, and he runs a fast and very capable crew. I went up there to see what they were up to and was surprised to see how far they had gotten in a very short time.

Roberto and the Tres Amigos

 It didn't take long at all before they had the forms ready to rock and roll, and then it was time for some actual concrete to get poured. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't cooperating, with quite a bit of rain and even some snow making it less than ideal for working with concrete. They did manage to get most of the footings poured, but our roughed-in road took a serious beating from the heavy cement trucks, and it got so slippery and rutted that the cement guys were afraid to drive back up with the last bit of cement to complete the footings.

The footings, as done as nature would allow them to be on that day.

Nonetheless, Chris, the County building inspector, came up and passed everything with flying colors. He commented that the foundation layout was one of  the best he had ever seen, meaning that he thought the footings, the pad and the forms all looked very well done. Yeah for Jason, Michael, Roberto and his hombres!

The weather has continued to be sketchy, but that didn't stop Roberto and his boys from getting up there today (Saturday!), and working their hineys off to get the forms ready for the stem walls. Here is what the site looked like just about an hour ago:

The forms for the stem walls miraculously appeared today.

While we were up there checking it out, I noticed that the wood product used to make the forms is from Canada. So, building this house is not just creating work for locals, but is also benefiting at least some folks back in the homeland.

I also noted that the supports for the front porch posts are HUGE, probably far more robust than necessary to hold up that small section of roof. But hey, I'd rather have the project over-engineered than under. Thus far, it looks to be a house built to last.

The buffalo-strong front porch supports.

In other news, Michael and I did a bit of exploring on Castle Peak up past our property the other day, and it was seriously cool up there.  I saw some beautiful Indian Paintbrush blossoms, a plant I have heard of but never seen in person before. The brilliant red color made me think of my mom, who has a penchant for the color red and for pretty flowers in general. Mom, this one is for you:

Indian Paintbrush growing wild in the canyon.

We also passed the remnants of an old mine, a reminder of the metals that led people to this area in the first place.

The entrance to the old mine.

And of course, I was thrilled when we came upon an area with a running creek, lush grass, and a herd of wild horses making the most of it all.  The herd seemed much less acclimated to humans and vehicles than the horses we commonly see around the neighborhood houses, and they ran off as we approached.

One mare, however, refused to follow them until she was good and ready, so I snapped the shot below of her drinking her fill in the creek. We heard the harem stallion calling to her, but she just tossed him an offhand nicker and stuck her muzzle back in the water. I could just imagine the conversation:

He: "Wilma! Dad gummit...Where the hell are you?"
She: "Keep your shirt on, Melvin. I'm not done drinking yet and I'm not a-comin' 'til I'm good and ready."

This mare was not to be rushed, despite her husband telling her to hurry up.

I have never seen running water anywhere in the Highlands before and have been wondering how the wild horses survive. These secret places are obviously critical for their needs, and I felt privileged to see them there.

Getting there was no piece of cake, however, as the "road" -- which is appropriately named Jeep Trail -- is full of sections washed away to reveal boulders and crazily canted parts that were a challenge to even our tough-as-nails ATV. I thought we were going to roll over at one point, but Michael assured me that the Rhino has a very low center of gravity and could handle that kind of rough going just fine.

Jeep Trail -- and not even one of the worst sections!

I want to take my friend Dona back there to see the creek area -- and hopefully to see those horses again -- but I wouldn't be brave enough to tackle that road without Michael there in case something went wrong. Fortunately, you can get to that area from another, much more civilized route, which we discovered on the way out.

Well, sorry it took me so long to get this post up. I will leave you with a picture that is here for no other reason than that it is so darn cute -- a shot of my new friend Becky's wee daughter, Skye (yes, the Fairy Princess herself), walking Rogie down the road. We had a second lead rope on his other side for safety, but Skye was the one he was following. They are getting to be good pals. 

Skye and Rogie

Lots of love to you all!

Going Down and Lookin' Up

I don't know if Michael would say that today was a good day, as he has had another crazy, working his patootie off kind of day.  He did, with the help of our friend Dean (husband of my dear friend Cindy), manage to get the pump lowered down into the well. To do this, he had to come up with all manner of clever, jerry-rigged contraptions and methods, including this suspension tripod, chained together out of lengths of pipe:

This clever contraption allowed two men to do the work of a huge crane.

I wasn't there when Dean and Michael were doing all of this, but Michael tried to explain it all to me later and showed me how the pump is secured within the pipe -- more on-the-fly solutions from the nimble brain of my husband.

The inner workings.

I think he actually worked a bit too hard today, and he didn't bring up any water or food to keep himself going, nor was he wearing a hat -- and it was pretty hot out. Bad boy! He even received a scolding look from one of our resident lizards, who was supervising the goings-on from atop a pile of dug up dirt.

"Inferior creature. You can't be up here with no water and no hat. Who do you think you are --  a lizard?"

I then took a little stroll around the property, for as usual, I couldn't leave without seeing what interesting things might be popping up to surprise me. What did I find today?  A few small white daisies that only seem to grow on one spot:

 And also some interesting patterns in the mud that dried in the bottom of the run-off pit from the digging of the second well:

This thick, cracked mud looked like the scales of some long-extinct relative of my haughty lizard friend.

Other interesting textures and contrasts abounded, some to do with color, some to do with scale, like these two pine cones that appear to have fallen from the same tree:

Immature and mature, perhaps?

I wasn't sure why there would be such different cones on the same tree, but speculated that maybe the smaller one had simply fallen off before it could grow to full size. I'm going to have to find a local plant expert, as I have so many questions about the plants around here!  I would like to know, for example, what this lovely blooming shrub is:

Very pretty wild shrub.

We don't have any of this pink stuff on our property that I have seen thus far -- this one was growing across the road.

I also noted that the piles of imported material for the building pad have grown and multiplied overnight. Jason has been busy -- and working on the weekend!

The pyramids of Giza got nuthin' on us!

I will leave you today with some news that is very good indeed. Lido was looking pretty spry when he came up the hill today, so I got brave enough to push him to do a few trot steps to assess how lame he might still be. To my great joy and relief, he looked fairly sound!  The way you can easily spot many front limb soundness issues in a horse is to observe whether or not their head bobs unevenly when they trot. Typically, when there is a problem, the head will bob down on the sound (good) leg and up on the painful leg. Horses naturally do this to try to lessen the loading forces on the hurt limb. If there was any head bob in Lido today, it was very hard to see: YEAH!!!!!!!!

I managed to video a bit of his little trot, and pulled some stills off it to compare. Look at the photo on the left and note the height of his head as the good leg takes his weight. Then compare that to the one on the right, where the boo-boo leg is fully loaded.

These stills are not the exact same moment in the stride for each side, but even so, you can see that he is pretty darn level at the trot -- ME SO HAPPY! This makes me think that he will not need stall rest after all, and I'm hoping he will continue to heal and improve, and won't even need another vet check. That would be fabulous.

Lido then topped my day off by posing most adorably for a couple of portrait shots:

Is that a cute horse or what?  I am a lucky gal indeed. All of you out there remind me of that the NEXT time I'm freaking out because something is going wrong -- okay?  ; )

Moon Dust and Peanut Butter

We got word today regarding what the soils engineer had to say about preparing our building pad for the foundation work. The good news: we won't necessarily have to dig out and replace the material on the entire pad down to two whole feet. This is because part of the pad area has quite of bit of naturally occurring gravel already in it. This is what good-for-building-on, gravelly soil looks like:

Lots of natural gravel -- yeah!

The good stuff is on the side of the house where the media room will be, but as you move towards the center of the house, the gravel disappears and the clay takes over.

Clay, as it looks when scraped with a backhoe and dried in the sun.

Now, I can appreciate a nice bit of clay when you are getting creative on a potter's wheel or making a sculpture, but as we have discovered, clay on your land is a pain in the hiney. It sticks to your shoes when it is wet (imagine a very thick, extremely heavy peanut butter coating your feet a couple of inches all the way around and you'll have a good idea of what it is like), bodes ill for well drilling, and is a no-no for putting stem walls on because it expands when wet, then turns to moon dust when it is dry.

"One small step for man..." The moon dust formed when dried clay gets mashed into fine silt.

All of the clay parts will have to be dug down and replaced with "imported" gravelly stuff. Jason has already started bringing up truckloads of the new material and heaping it around the site.

The "store-boughten" gravel is in the foreground. A hump of the evil clay dirt lurks behind.

Jason, ever the decent fellow, is going to try to keep the cost to $3000, even though we know he won't likely be making his usual rate on that. He is aware that everything so far has been going over budget, and he is trying to do what he can to help us out. The soils guy is probably going to cost around $600 when all is said and done, but all of this is necessary to ensure that the foundation will be solid.

Meanwhile, poor Michael got swamped with work emergencies on his "day off" (ha!), which left him with very little time to try to secure the well pump he needs to get the water going for Jason's compaction work. When he finally put out the various fires, he had to run hither and yon all over town to try to get what he needed, and of course, it ended up costing more because he had to buy it all retail instead of having the luxury to deal with suppliers directly. Here it is 9:00 p.m. and he is busy sorting well parts on our living room floor and the kitchen table. The stress is telling on him, and I feel pretty useless, as there is nothing I can do to help with all this well craziness other than make him a nice cup of tea.

Panther Kitty checks out the well parts decorating the living room floor. He would help if he could!

I have done a lot of work on other aspects of the project: designing the house, choosing things like flooring, cabinets, etc., but we're now deep into "man stuff" territory, and it is really best if I just stay out of the way.  While on site today, I found my mind turning to thick, clay-like mush when Jason and Michael started discussing the pros and cons of different ways to deal with the issues we are facing: e.g. digging out the whole thing and having to do more cement work vs. digging deep in some parts and shallow in others, yada yada yada.

Man Stuff: The Guys discuss the fascinating options possible for digging and cement work.

So, I left them to their deliberations and headed up to my little rock seat, where I tried to inhale some of the peace and quiet into my brain.

The South-East (I think) view from my rock seat. Smell the Zen!

While there, I noticed something blooming that I hadn't seen before -- a rather dry and dead-looking shrub incongruously bedecked with tiny yellow flowers.

Sweet-smelling blooms.

I wondered if these could be at least partially responsible for the sweet smell that has been wafting through the neighborhood air, so I went up to the bush and checked it out. Sure enough, it exuded a subtle but definitely sweet scent, quite lovely.

I also noticed something else that struck me as incongruous: a bright chartreuse-colored piece of moss growing on a fallen piece of deadwood below the flowering bush. One would think that our climate is far too dry for any kind of moss to survive, but I'm discovering that this high desert environment holds many surprises.

A little clump of moss where moss seems a mystery.

Later in the day, I went to the barn and re-wrapped Lido's leg. A couple of days ago, I had emailed some photos of the wounds' progress to Dr. Ruby, who said she was actually quite pleased with how they were looking. However, she, like me, is concerned about possible tendon injury. She said that Lido may have to be put on stall rest for at least 60 days if he isn't sound soon. Having seen how incredibly depressed he was with just one day of stall confinement, I know that would be just horrible for him. If it comes to that, I will make him a little "in-and-out" paddock just outside the stall so that he will at least be able to stand outside and see the boys and the world. Hopefully, that would be enough to prevent him from going on another hunger and water strike.

Dona was there today helping me with the barn chores and keeping Lido still while I did his leg, and we also had a visit from Becky and Skye, the Fairy Princess herself. She was sans wings today, but adorable nonetheless. She was very eager to help me with everything I was doing, so I got her to carry one end of each hay bin as we gave the horses their lunch, and she even held the big snow shovel for me (with a little help from Mom) when I was sweeping the stalls. Once the horses were eating, she decided that they would prefer to be hand fed than to eat off the stall floors, so she crouched down and gave each of them several handfuls of hay. We were careful to make sure her tiny fingers didn't get munched and that she wasn't in danger of being stepped on, but the horses were very careful of her themselves. The expressions on their faces (and Rogie's) made it clear that they are all as captivated with their new wee friend as she is with them. Sadly, I didn't have my camera with me to capture these special moments, but I'm sure she will be back and I promise to get some shots of her with the boys.

Skye was also pleased to have been made an "Official Rogie Auntie" today -- she got a certificate and everything.

Skye's certificate, which I of course signed to make it official.

I must say, I never wanted kids myself, but it is definitely a lot of fun to have them around sometimes!

So, today I give thanks to good friends, the beauty of nature, my wonderful animals, and a very charming little girl for how much they helped me to put aside the stress of a challenging day.

More soon!  : )