Eating an elephant – an update

We’re getting a little sick of eating this elephant… it’s stuck in our teeth, we’re choking on it & it doesn’t matter how small the chunks, it’s still taking ages to chew.

But we are getting there – slowly but surely.  We have had a run of dry days which helps enormously with this enormity.  Here’s the view of the side of the shower block a couple of days agao – mud all levelled out & looking tidy:

However, there is still much mud to be moved and we have been agonising over what to do with it.  The first priority was to cover & protect the grey water pipes that protrude from the baths and run our waste water to our gardens.  First the pipes had to be levelled again and thanks to Nik we had a spirit level with blocks attached that give us the level for the 2% drop required.  I am reminded again at what a legend Mr Paddison is.  The grey water system is a triumph largely due to his patience, perseverance and effort.

Steve had a vision of a new terrace wall to give us an edge to level to and to hide the 3rd bath in an attractive structure mirroring the one he had built around the grease trap and first bath.  I have to admit, I was not a fan of the idea.  More rocks to move… my muscles ached just thining about it.  But it was a great way to use some of the excess soil and it would look great.  Here is the start of the sub-project that this elephant task has created – you can also see the mud heap to the right that safely hugs the greywater pipes:

We are in the process of uncovering terrace walls that have been hidden with mud for more than a year so we trawled through old photos to see what the walls looked like before clay mountain.  It was incredible – the land has changed beyond recognition.  That’s a measure of how far we have come…

Today was a beautiful sunny day and more things seem possible with the heat of those rays warming our bones.  So we plodded on as the birds and butterflies painted the sky with bright colours – fragile wings beating orange; yellow wagtails; blue tits; red robins.

I set about prising the mud away from the terrace wall below the baths.  I felt like an archeologist on a dig, gently chipping away at the piled up earth to reveal the stone wall:

Meanwhile Steve was building an awesome wall.  Here’s the view from the side:

The plank was our makeshift ramp for rolling up some of the massive rocks.  Jeez, I’m doing weight training++ at the moment shifting these buggers!  Despite all the agony – cramping hands, aching back etc – it was all worth it when we reviewed our progress at the end of the day:

You can’t really tell from these photos but we have a reasonable wall here (saving us a lot of time as the tyre wall now won’t have to be so long) and we have regained width on the terrace itself – it will look sooo great!

And this is the really cool shot of Steve’s fantastic new terrace wall that made me thank him for insisting – he was right and it will look great.

At this rate we will finish filling this area in with soil on Thursday.  We will sow grass seed and let nature be for 2 weeks (we are off to the UK for Steve’s birthday and fun with friends & family), hoping beyong hope that we will return to green shoots of growth everywhere…