Much Rubbish

Sometimes a desire and plan morph into a project. For that reason, I don't have many pictures of the beginning of my workshop, and the first one is incidental. The following picture was taken of one of two fawns that bedded down 30 feet from our back door for several weeks. The picture was taken with my old phone that did not have better than a passable camera which was worse on electronic zoom and here used through a windowpane. Even with me sneaking up to the window, the fawn is on high alert. The point for this blog entry, however, is not the cute wildlife but the pile of rubble in the background. This picture was taken after 90% of the brush had been removed, revealing the construction rubble. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started this project. I determined to recycle what could be. That resulted in some 5+ 5-gallon buckets full of broken glass, more aluminum cans and plastic, random steel cans and auto parts severely rusted by the buckets full.

Then came the whole and partial block and brick, rock and asphalt out of which I formed the following cairn. Since the dump charges by the ton, this pile would have cost several hundred dollars to remove to there at great effort on my part. It turned out to be useful later.

It took months of off days from work to clear the debris, roots and dirt. A good portion of the dirt was actually ash. Evidently, there had been some kind of out building here that had been burned down with all of its sundry collections of jars (some melted-wow, intense fire), auto parts, plastic containers (mostly in the form of melted plastic "drops"), globs of aluminum (with hints of can rims), insulation, and charred wood. Besides the cairn of broken construction materials, I collected a pile of gravel-sized brick-block-rock and a pile of full and useful partial block. Underneath it all was another surprise, a ~14' x 20' concrete pad. I was initially excited about a pad on which to build my workshop until I realized that it was cracked at the edges and slanted a full 8 inches downward from back to front. It will still be used but as a "carport" surface rather than shop floor.

Were this not arduous enough, I began to dig out a notch for the workshop pad. I had almost everyone who observed this process say that I should or was crazy for not renting an excavator. My reply has been the same from the beginning: 1) That is expensive, 2) Having a need to fill numerous holes and gulleys in the yard, most of the dirt needed to be distributed and spread, 3) An excavator would destroy the lawn, and 4) It would require a larger, more expensive excavator to remove the roots (some up to eight inches in diameter). From before the first picture, beginning to clear brush, until this near completion of excavating required a year. Of course, weather and the rest of life (OK, some of it was just going on hikes with a friend) prevented any speedier completion of phase 1 and 2 (clearing debris and digging).

So, you may either admire my perseverance and strength of body and mind or decry my stubbornness and cheap nature, but I am thankful that I was able to complete this process. Now I was ready to begin.