Basement and Bees

I'm on my sixty-seventh great day in a row. I haven't really been counting, but it feels like a lot! Today Nathan, Lige and I worked on my basement walls some more. We nearly finished them but ran a few blocks short. I'll get the remainder in a day or two and then those will go in the same day we pour the concrete basement floor, probably. Today felt like a huge success and progress was so visible. It's a lot more gratifying than waiting three weeks to have my address post installed.

This is the west-facing wall completely done. The rectangular space is where my egress window will be located. Egress window always makes me think of egret window. Prepare for impending biology joke. During the summer and spring, I'll have a Great Egress window, but in late fall and winter, it will be a Snowy Egress window.


The south-facing wall is the only one incomplete. Up on the left there where a half-block kind of stands alone, there will be a window in the small space to the left. There will be three of those windows installed in this wall at the same height within the top two courses of blocks (a "course" is one layer of blocks running on the same horizontal plane). One will be in the very center of the wall with the third being symmetrically placed to the one on the left, but on the right side of the wall.


Here Nathan is laying the top course of blocks on the south wall. If you look closely, you will see the top two courses are textured differently than all the blocks below. The top ones are called "rock face" blocks and look more natural or pretty than the smooth cement-looking regular blocks. This is just for aesthetic purposes. Only the top two courses are rock-face blocks, because those are the only ones that will show above ground. So if you refer to the previous picture, you can imagine the base of my windows on the south wall will be at the surface level of the ground around the house so all but the top sixteen inches of my basement will be below grade (under ground). We will take some of the dirt that was excavated from the basement and mound it up below the top two courses of blocks. It will look a bit like my house is sitting on a little hill, though it will in fact be several feet below the surface!


Here you can kind of see the whole scene, including scaffolding used for laying the top courses. The cabin is located near the north end of the lot, so this picture looks south to where most of my land is. The pond is among those trees out there and this is the view I will face if I look out the imagined windows on the front of the house.


Melanie had a delicious dinner awaiting me when we were done working for the day. I ate and hung out with the kids a little before Paul took me out to see his bee hives! He told me each bee lives only around two weeks and produces about a teaspoon of honey in a lifetime. Wow, so many life-works have gone into my morning smoothies and into my belly! He also told me about the amazing communication systems bees use with one another. Apparently, a bee can report to a group where a food source is located, how much food is there, and what the quality of it is as well! I can hardly imagine.

Out we ventured into the dark night, dressed up in these outfits which seemed a bit overly cautious until angry bees were trying to sting my head. It was a fascinating experience; I could hear the scream of the bee's wings in attack mode and could feel it ramming into my net hood, but it was unable to get to my skin. Added bonus: I was impervious to mosquitoes as well! Bonus bonus: we looked so silly it made us smile!