June 18, 2004

Greetings from Granbury - 3

We’ve had lots of excitement around here lately. At last we're getting started on the shop/greenhouse building. Builder Dan Dunn, the one who built our house is doing it for us.

You may recall the picture of the building site identified by pink surveyor's ribbon at the end of letter 2. Before we got to that point some trees had to come out on the actual site and some that we felt were too close to the house. The building was positioned to save the big oak at the right. That and another similar-sized tree will provide welcome afternoon shade. Notice the wide spaces between blocks of sod. We deal with that shortly.

The picture at right shows them removing a tree between the garage and a tree we decided to save. This one was within about two feet of the house. The tan tinge at the near corner of the roof is residue from another too-close tree that was removed. This was done April 6^th on a rather gloomy morning.

We had top soil spread in those gaps in the sod in order to level the yard enough so that it could be mowed without scalping the grass.

They hauled in about 7 loads of this red soil that the workers spread between the blocks of sod. This happened at the same time as the tree removal. This place was a bee hive for a couple of days. Then we had to learn to deal with all that red sand. We change shoes alot!

Eventually we did get started on the construction. June 2^nd a crew came out and set up the forms. This involved squaring the corners and leveling the forms. We had intended having an overhead door near the lower right corner of the building. But when we saw how high the slab needed to be at that corner we eliminated the door and made the building two feet narrower. That gave us two feet more space between the garage and the new building. The dirt pile in the center is what was left over when they finished spreading the soil around the sod blocks.

This is getting long enough for the load time for dial up connections. So we'll continue on the next page. To be continued on next page ...