-
Sunset wine
I am sort of disappointed in my life at the moment. I haven’t fulfilled my potential; I keep delaying my ideas until I can realise them fully. But at 56, time is running short for grand plans and I feel a slight sense of urgency to act on my dreams. Maybe I can do something…
-
All by myself
I went up to 555 this morning expecting to see the Monaca Doken crew on this sunny day but nobody was there. As it turned out, they got a call for another job with some urgency and went off in the big blue dump truck to take care of it. This did not deter me…
-
It’s cat blanket weather
We are in that best-of-year period where days are temperate and nights are chilly. The low temperature this morning was a single digit (8) for the first time this season. It won’t last forever, so I will savor all of these lovely days. Last night, I grabbed an extra blanket for the bed. In the…
-
Milk Cement
Today, a company called Something or maybe it is Some Thing, bored 45 holes in the space that will be our house and filled them with “milk cement,” which I think we’d call cement slurry in America. This was done to solidify and reinforce the soft spots that were uncovered in a Swedish sounding test…
-
The mystery hole
Today we went back into ujiko mode. The next big step for Monaca Doken is to set the drains around the barn. It’s going to involve a lot of hand-digging and after the mess of groundwater yesterday, I think we all want this to go well. But a piece of information about the height and…
-
Too much water
Today, after almost a week of break due to rain, Maru-chan levelled the lot by scraping away all of the yamasuna down to the cinders of the old house. It is neatly piled up like a mountain of gelato. With the top layer of soil removed and the ground bare, the drilling can begin next…
-
Kitchen stairs
The Monaca Doken guys surprised me twice on Tuesday. Once by moving a boulder to form The Giant’s Teeth, and again when they built me a staircase of foundation stones. The stairs sit at the northwest corner of the house, which will be the kitchen. They reach from the end of the retaining wall up…
-
Witch’s broom
Amongst the many branches I ran through the chipper last month, I found one that I set aside. It was the perfect shape my my hand and a good length to become a handle for something. After the jichinsai, the bamboo altar was dismantled and tossed on the burn pile. Before burning, I took a…
-
The giant’s teeth
While we have freedom to drive the yumbo every which way across the lot, Monaca Doken are collecting all the old foundation stones and the boulders around the property to reuse them. It’s exactly what I hoped for – the quantity of materials around the space is epic and there are many stones just waiting…
-
1:1 scale
Sasaki-san and Yoshida-san came to 555 today to stake out the corners of the building and to show me some really meaningful measurements. It took a few tries to get the building in the right place. I have reasons for not wanting it the typical 90 cm from the edge of the drainage – the…
Archives