Our new swimming pool!

The foundation walls have been stripped of their forms and now make a great swimming pool!

In the lower pix they look like a fortress with a moat around it...

As you can see, it's been really wet on Cortes and we have not yet sorted out some of the drainage issues on the site.

Nevertheless, the foundations are done and they look good.

Pouring the Foundations

On December 21st Mike and his team successfully poured the concrete foundations. Here is David Rousseau's report on how it went...

Your foundation walls were poured successfully (in heavy rains) on Tuesday. By now the forms are stripped and it's mostly cleaned up. Mike, Noba, John Hayes (English stonemason living in Moreka's cabin) and I did the pour. The truck couldn't get as close as Mike would like because of mud. But it wasn't much of a stretch. Took about 3-1/2 hrs to unload and place the concrete, and another 3 hrs to set bolts and cleanup. There was almost an extra yard (this is inevitable), so it went under the kitchen area as a thin slab.

Looks like a wet and very muddy scene. I feel a bit guilty about enjoying the comfort of our condo in Burnaby while others do the dirty work. But maybe I'll feel better when I get the bill!

Anyway, we are delighted it all went well and we are now close to being ready to start framing the house. Meanwhile, Danielle and I are planning a visit to check things out between Christmas and New year.

Forms in place

Here you can see the wonderful Mike and Noba working on the forms for the foundation walls for our house. Mike is the guy who built the workshop this past summer and who tolerated me as his helper.

Noba Anderson is his partner and also happens to be the Regional Director for Cortes Island. I first met Noba when I sold her my baidarka (kayak) a few years ago. She is a remarkable young woman with a serious IQ.


These forms will contain the concrete as it is poured and then be removed once it has set. The floor joists will sit on top of these walls and there will be a crawl space underneath.

This is a critical stage of the house construction because everything rests on these foundations. It's very reassuring to have Mike's expertise combined with David's on-site involvement while this work is being done.



Once the foundation is completed, it will likely sit until April when I plan on returning to Cortes to start building the house, hopefully with Mike once again playing the role of construction boss and me as his humble helper.

Footings

Over the past couple of weeks Mike has been working on the foundations. Here are the forms for the footings
Island Readymix provided the concrete.
I wasn't there for this part of the project but from what I hear the site has been pretty muddy. Mike has been running a pump to keep water away from the newly poured concrete.
The poured footings with rebar sticking up for the next stage, the foundation walls.

House design revealed!

After months of deliberation and many hours of design work by David Rousseau and his team we now have a design for our house that is pretty close to "final". The basic configuation is a "V" as you can see in this view of the south elevation. On the left is the living room and on the right is the kitchen. In between is the dining room and the "central core" in which there will be spiral stairs to the second floor. There's a deck and a patio in the notch of the V. These face the open meadow and the garden.
Viewed from the east this pic shows the kitchen on the left, with its own small deck. The carport provides sheltered access to the main entrance which is actually on the east side of the house at the end of the driveway.

















The interior view is from the living room looking through the central core towards the kitchen and dining area. A nice feature is the way the exterior steps from the deck to the patio are continued inside as steps down to the living room.

At the back of the house is the master bedroom, bathroom, a small office and a laundry room.

Upstairs there will be a bright and spacious multi-purpose room with its own deck and a small bathroom. We see this as our "studio", guest bedroom, etc.

We are delighted with the design and look forward to seeing it materialize as we work are way through the construction process over the next few years.

Breaking Ground!

This week the excavation for our house was done by John Vosper, with assistance from Mike and David. This is the first major step in the construction process and it's exciting to see it actually happening.



As you can see, the dirt that was removed is good top soil that we can re-use around the property.
John Vosper will be back in a few days to do some landscaping and move our huge burn pile out to the meadow where it can be safely burned.

Fire!

Today I tackled the formidable burn pile. When the site for the workshop was cleared back in the spring, the stumps and branches of the trees that were removed were piled up in a spot under the cedar trees. Good spot except for the fact that they could not be burned there. So today, I started burning the pile by moving it, armload by armload, out into the open area in front of the workshop. The fire was never too big, but over the course of the day a lot of stuff got burned. I must have made close to 100 trips between the burn pile and the fire, a distance of maybe 15 yards. So that adds up to 1.5km of me carrying heavy armloads of wood. OK it's not a marathon, but I feel like I did a day's work! As the day wore on I began to view the pile as my nemesis, my arrogant enemy. I vowed in my heart to vanquish it/him. Little by little I would pull him apart and tear him down.... Humble him!
It was a silly game but it kept me going for a while. I figure we ended up in a bit of a dead heat, the burn pile and me. It's still huge, but not quite as huge.

Fire!
Dance of transformation.
Intense heat.
Penetrating heat.
I feel it in my bones.
Like no other heat
Fire radiates
Right through me.
Fire reaches into me
Finds my hidden places
Warms me completely.
Fire is so rare these days
Hidden from view
Like sex.
Fire is almost an alien in our modern world
The devil's energy
The energy of volcanoes and forest fires
And arson.
Yet fire is the missing element
In our lives.
We have air, water and earth in relative abundance (if not purity)
But where is fire?
Hidden in the hearts of our automobile engines
Hidden in our gas furnaces
Hidden in our garbage incinerators
But wait...
Fire has been tamed and civilized.
Fire is now acceptable and available at the flick of a switch
In our fake log, gas-powered fireplaces.
Oh joy!

Tonight John Vosper came over and we had a meeting with David to discuss the excavation work. In typical island style we talked about many things before we got around to the excavation work. I am confident John will do a good job.

Preparing to dig...

Here's David Rousseau, our architect friend, checking the plans as we layed out the footprint of the house in preparation for excavation. Yes we did do this once before, just to see how the house fits on the site, but this time it was a lot more accurate.
View looking south across the house site. The flagging tape marks the footprint.



Fall colours in the hazel nut trees as the winter rye steadily grows in the garden area. I love this time of year with its warm colours and earthy smells and the sounds of the migrating geese... and the tree frogs...

At this point I am getting close to the end of my first "season" here in May's Garden on Cortes Island. I will be no doubt making some visits over the winter but for the most part, it's time to say goodbye to this piece of land and this island until next spring.

I will post the revised house design next week.

Thank you for your many kind comments about this blog. It is a real pleasure to be living it!

Andy

Fall

The geese are heading south. I see them by day and hear them by night. No surer sign of colder days to come.

Fire season officially ended yesterday so I wasted no time in burning this pile of wood that had accumulated over the summer. (watch video here). Mind you this is just a fraction of the BIG PILE that's sitting in the woods by the workshop. Still not sure how to deal with that job...
This morning we had our first frost. I discovered this web in the tall grass near the trailer. I see the occupant is home, hiding up at the top by the seeds of the grass.

Tree Frog

As fall sets in life in the trailer is not as much fun as it was back in mid summer. The days are shorter and I spend much less time outside. So I have found ways to keep myself busy and happy, like writing my "memoirs"...
One welcome prsence is a little tree frog who has moved in to the trailer. He hides in the closets and cupboards but he is quite audible. Tonight I recorded him/her so you can listen too. http://www.andyvine.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/tree-frog.mp3 Any suggestions for what I could call him/her?

Garden Gates

They may not be elegant but the two garden gates function well. They are "filled" with wire deer fencing, so there is an unbroken perimeter around the garden to keep the plants safe from the deer.

This is the old gate that used to be in this spot but got "lost" for a while. I re-attached it with new hinges.

The next job is to start burning the big pile of tree trimmings, deadfall etc. that's sitting in the meadow waiting for the start of fire season on October 15th. Then there's the even bigger pile by the workshop...

Life...

Today I watched a pair of pileated woodpeckers peck away at our apple tree. At the same time a big blue jay flew off with a hazel nut in its beak. Earlier I saw a squirrel scurrying away with a walnut. As I write, a tree frog is croaking away outside my window. When I went down to the government dock I saw a pair of kingfishers up in tree, loudly protesting my presence in their terrain. A mass of small fish swam around my boat. A seal swam, nose up out in the bay. Back at my trailer I noticed a whole colony of fruit flies on one of the apples I left on the patio table. And these were just a few of the life forms I noticed on this wonderful autumn day. As I sat looking out at our garden plot and the trees beyond I reflected on the rich web of life all around me. And I wondered about my own feeling of being somehow separate from this web.

With my over-developed human brain I am indeed different from other species. But when I notice how they live, I wonder how different I really am….

Nature is who I am. Nature is not "all around" me. It is not even "within me". The fact is, nothing about me, not one single cell, is "separate from" nature. My nature is human nature. My unique expression of human nature is who I am. Just like every fruit fly is a unique expression of fruit fly nature. And like the fruit fly, I am a work in progress. Growth is also my nature.

My life is nature’s way of growing human nature. So the purpose of my life is to live and express my human nature as fully and as beautifully as I know how.

Success! Gwyneth's new mooring

Well the raft did not work out. But while I was repairing it for a second attempt, an oyster farm boat showed at the slip to unload. After they'd finished, Grant, the owner offered to take the mooring block out to my spot for me. With his twin 90HP motors he dragged it off the baech and motored out to the spot I had marked with a buoy. However... when we cut the rope holding the block, the mooring line got tangled up and there was a big knot about 10ft below the surface.

I thought about how to deal with it overnight and this morning phoned Jedidiah Duyf, the local diver. Luckily he was available and this afternoon he untangled the line for me.

So now, finally, Gwyneth has her own mooring. Yeah!!!

Here she is sitting at it as the first puffs of a rising gale make themselves felt. Tonight it is supposed to blow 35 knots so the mooring will be put to the test. I am very confident that it will handle this and a much stronger blow.
That's Gwyneth off to the right of the dock, a fairly easy row in my little dinghy.

House Design

This sketch by David Rousseau gives a good idea of the house we are planning to build. As you can see from the floor plan, it has a "V" formation. The main aspect is southerly with kitchen facing south east and the living room south west. In between the two "wings" will be a deck with french doors from the central core of the house. The living room will be at grade (ground level) and the rest of the house will be built over a crawl space. The ground floor will be approx. 1100sq ft. Upstairs there will be a multi-purpose room of approx. 500 sq. ft. This space will have its own little deck facing south.

At the back of the house, there will be a master bedroom, bathroom, a small office and the laundry/mud room off the side entrance. This entrance will in fact be the main entrance as it is under the carport. (We're considering having a living grass roof to the carport).

There are many details still to be worked out but this looks like the overall design concept we will bee working with.

Growth and wind damage

I've been away from Cortes for 10 days during which there was some pretty severe winds and lots of rain. The latter seems to have helped the rye seed I sowed sprout very fast. As you can see there is now a green hue to the garden.








The wind storm took the top of an alder tree on the property line leaving the path to the outhouse blocked. So I just spent an hour with my chain saw, limbing the tree and dragging the limbs over to the burn pile. The rest of the tree needs to come down but that requires a bigger chain saw than my Echo.

The wind also destroyed the Cortes Hilton! It blew it about 50ft un till it caught in some tree branches. Two poles were badly bent and there are tears to the fly sheet. My guess is it's toast.