Rock Crest Renaissance: 2012

Sweet Release!

A bit more than a week ago, we finally released our dear friend Chip the Squirrel. What you might think would be a mundane activity of two steps -- open door, see squirrel run -- was substantially more involved. I admit, I'm the cause for release delay, but when you've reared a squirrel from a tiny little nugget the size of your finger to a full-fledged walnut cracker, you want to think very carefully about how best to integrate your small, pampered child into the wild.

Chip had been living in an utterly gorgeous squirrel condo created for him by Builder Dan, which we'd originally parked at the back of the kennel. Once excavation and hill reshaping, trench-digging, and wall-building commenced over there, Dan took it upon himself and his forklift to relocate the little man in front of the cats' runs -- a nicer place for Chippy and infinite Squirrel TV for the cats. An animal win-win.

Chip and his cats had been neighbors for over a year by the time we had the opportunity to relieve our friends the Jodys of their hot tub and use the manpower that came along with it to relocate Chip's cage again. I wanted Chip to be able to come and go from his cage after release, but his cat-based location was extremely exposed to the sky above and lacking in any good means of vertical escape. I wanted to situate him under tree cover, near a water source, and in a place he would have a chance to escape and defend himself. So, the good strong gentlemen tub movers re-positioned him out in the "back 40" plateau behind the fence line.

Chip's plateau home is beneath a cluster of very tall trees and only about 30 yards from the streamhead before it flows down the hill. Mama likes! So, once the weather was conducive and we found the time, we created a hole in his cage mesh, surrounded it with a wood block on either side with a hole through the center - to protect him from the metal edges of the mesh, and prepared to see him exit. Lo and behold - we cut the hole too small and he wasn't comfortable trying to squeeze out. Another couple of weeks passed before we had the chance to enlarge the holes.

This time, K hopped into the cage so that I didn't have to do the contortioneering required to get in, avoid stepping on the floor mesh, and stabilize myself with legs apart on the wooden floor edges. Of course, we'd first extracted Chip to a cat carrier so that he wouldn't go ballistic in the cage. Instead, he ate his offering of nuts and then went ballistic in the carrier, chewing on the metal door and generally expressing displeasure.

Back in his condo, Chip was a bit unsure about this new portal. Brien had attached a little hole "sill" so he'd have a place to perch inside. I tucked some nuts and enticements into the hole... and, after a little coaxing... Out he came!!

He was tentative at first, feeling the tree bark, climbing down to touch the dirt, exploring a little bit of grass. Then, he clasped onto the closest tree and ascended up higher and higher, nibbling on leaf stems and buds and other things interesting to the mouth of a juvenile squirrel. Finally, he was at the very top of the 60' tree and I could barely stand to watch as he inched out on some floppy branches. Thankfully, he's got decent squirrel sense, despite his years in the condo, and he seemed to know just what to do. He descended that tree and ascended another, then repeated the process with the 3rd tree. Finally, he came all the way down and scampered across a low branch just above his condo roof. I took a walnut over to him, which he took from my hands absentmindedly, and dropped it, then reached down with 2 gentle little paws and touched my finger. It was a beautiful moment for a Mom and a squirrel. Then, he headed back up the tree.

We left nuts and supplies for him for several days, but we didn't see him. Then, Brien was over there the other day and Chip practically leaped onto him! Of course, with the history of biting, Brien was not too enthused about this. However, it was clear to him that Chip wasn't in a fighting mood. He decided to enhance Chip's accommodations once again and made him a little ramp from the closest tree to his condo door so he could more easily come and go. Afterward, Chip was back in the Condo, hanging out. I've been afraid that he would be a squirrel nerd with the ladies - but maybe the Condo will be a selling point. As I often say, I'm ready for some grandsquirrels...

I went to see him the next day and took more food. Not finding him in his Condo, I set off to do my other animal chores -- caring for the 9 cats in the kennel. As I approached the trees near their runs, I noticed Ansel doing some "bird whispering" -- "mmmmmyyahhh yahhh aaaah ahhhh" -- which I thought was strange since I've never seen birds hanging out in those trees. As I got to the tree and looked at it, out popped a little face from behind the trunk - a squirrel. "Is it... Chip?," I wondered. I'd always been a little melancholy about the fact that after releasing Chip, I'd likely not be able to recognize him since squirrels really do look mostly alike. But, instantly, it was obvious that it was Chip -- I could tell by his face, and I could clearly determine that he wanted to hop onto my arm!

I was afraid to have Chip on my person because I still have no feeling in the side of my thumb near the fingernail where Chip bit me last September. I am NOT eager to repeat that action. However, he IS SO CUTE and he definitely wanted some attention and love. He hopped onto my right forearm, grabbed it with all fours, and proceeded to do that cute little "running in place" thing he always used to do. I'd forgotten all about it, since it's been so long since I held him. Once I felt comfortable that he was comfortable, I scratched his head and his back, and we had a lovely bonding time. As our visit was concluding, I did not feel comfortable leaving him there on that tree, basically out in the open in the very place I'd moved him from! So, I started S-L-O-W-L-Y making my way around the kennel, at around the pace of a space shuttle approaching the launching pad. Meanwhile, Chip's agitation grew with every step away from a vertical surface -- something I determined by the speed of his little feet pattering up and down my legs, back, and arms and by the trickles of squirrel pee running down by back.

After what seemed like 20 minutes, I finally arrived near the giant sycamore in the back yard. When I was within about 3 feet of it, Chip sprung off my left shoulder like he was shot from a cannon, and he grabbed that monstrous trunk, then headed up to the long branch I hope will one day hold a swing. Up on the branch, he was so well-camouflaged that I felt very good about my work and the risk I'd taken to walk him over there. A mother's heart is always relieved to know her children are safe and happy!

When soap becomes a guilty pleasure

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I understand the concept of blogs... that they are tributes to a topic, catering to particular interests like a little world unto themselves. With the Rock Crest endeavor, however, it's impossible to isolate it from the life that goes on around it, namely our 47 other lives -- as parents, professionals, shelter volunteers, and home owners of a totally other home (that's often neglected because of what we're doing at Rock Crest). So, today, as I was driving from my workout, to the "other house" to attempt some contract work before heading over to the Crest, I found myself thinking about the insanity of the way all these lives collide.

Today was a tense, anxious day for me. I awoke tired, confronted (valiantly, I thought!) an hour of hard exercise, driven by my trainer, and contemplated every wasted minute thereafter that ate into the precious 2 hours I would otherwise have to do some real work. Once implanted in my work chair, however, I couldn't help but swallow hard at the thought of the meeting ahead. Today was the day I was to meet with our area forester to review our honeysuckle removal progress of the past nearly 3 years to see if we were judged to be in compliance with our EQIP program requirements.

We applied for EQIP - an invasive species remediation program run by the USDA's NRCS - with hopes of receiving some financial support for the work we already intended to do to return the forest at Rock Crest to the healthy environment it had been before the honeysuckle took over. After several years of application attempts, we were finally admitted into the program, with the stipulation that we had to clear 4 acres of honeysuckle overgrowth in 2 years' time. We would be evaluated at the half-way point to see if we still qualified for reimbursement for the expenses we'd incurred in getting rid of the honeysuckle.

After what we've expended, monetarily and physically, to clear what we've cleared, the compensation from EQIP is almost negligible. However, any financial help is a boost. Beyond that, though -- and probably most important to me -- I wanted us to be recognized for the incredible work we'd done. I wanted that work to be validated to the tune of recognizing that, if we hadn't cleared 2 acres, we'd certainly come close and demonstrated an incredible effort.

It's sometimes difficult living this Rock Crest life because the things we have to do just to progress on a single project often exceed the labor, expense and effort we'd have put forth at the other house for all our projects combined. In RC land, we've ceased to be a part of the "normal" society of our peers and ventured more into the realm of frontiersmen, farmers, or buccaneers. It's kind of impossible to tell people what we've been up to without it sounding like the cries of martyrdom or the pompous assertions that everything we do is harder than anything anyone else does. So, much of the time, I don't get into the details, and then I feel very unsung. It's a strange experience, for sure.

So, the forester arrived, and I proceeded to expound to him about everything we've done since he was last here in 2009. I detailed our methods for clearing the honeysuckle, how we attack it by size, what strategies we use for maneuvering it, hauling it, disposing of it, chipping it, or letting it lie. I told him about the ailanthus we killed and carefully brought down when it was dead enough not to send out runners to spread itself. I told him about our attempts and evaluations of hack-and-squirt, foliar spraying, root popping, copper nailing, and even the encouragement of webworm moths for attacking ailanthus. I knew I was sounding like the "City Mouse," but I could not seem to get control of myself, so I just let it fly. I walked him around, explaining tree by liberated tree what we'd done and how things had changed for the wildlife and air quality since we'd "decluttered" and reshaped the hillside.

For his part, the man was an utter tree savant! Not only did he remember specific trees he'd seen at our place the last time he was there, including where they'd stood and how many there were, but he was able to look into the sea of grass on the hillside and identify seedlings of various trees by the merest sight of a leaf or branch structure. What an eye! He had terrific suggestions for our ongoing invasives battles and identified trees that needed to be taken down because of poor health.

I couldn't resist taking him inside to show him the house -- more or less so he could get the full picture of why our time has not been as devoted to honeysuckle removal as we'd have liked.

He was very complimentary, overall, and he told me several times that he could see that we had made a lot of progress. I was SO happy to hear that, and I told him it meant a lot because we HAD worked incredibly hard. I think he was pretty impressed with our gigantic wood chip piles, the only remnants of our once ridiculously huge honeysuckle brush piles.

Buoyed by the happy news that the forester seemed to feel we'd met our clearing quota, I turned my attention to the other aspect of my usual Rock Crest life -- cat and squirrel care. The past week had seen a number of strange and inexplicable food shortages in the runs, which we could only image were somehow attributable to raccoon raids. Brien finally found what he thought might be a small entry point above the run closest to the house, by way of a gap between the house and the top of the kennel. He'd addressed that last night, and I was glad to see that it seemed that run was in decent shape today. However, the center run was out of food and water, and both food and water were spilled in the far run, as well -- as if they'd been tipped over but not accessed directly, since their food was still there, all over the floor.

I climbed up onto a chair in the external part of the central run and investigated the kennel roof. Sure enough, there was a gap between the kennel wall -- which had a small window in it -- and the kennel run roof that looked vaguely big enough for a small (maybe juvenile?) raccoon to sneak in and back out again. I also noticed a copious amount of poop on the top of the run wall which backed up my assumption that that's where they were getting in. I spent about half an hour sweating in the sticky humidity, trying different kinds of boards and blocks until I finally found one to do the trick... at least, I HOPE so. Tomorrow will tell.

I spent the next hour completely cleaning and fixing the runs, refilling food, cleaning water bowls, scooping litter, and returning things to order. Ordinarily, I wouldn't mind, but having already done this about 5 times in the past couple of weeks, I was eager to finish. With so little time to spare already, spending an extra 5 hours repeating a job necessitated by raccoons is a sure way to make me aggravated.

As I was finishing up, sweaty, dirty, covered in who knows what kind of rained-down excrement and other nameless substances, I found my mind wandering... contemplating the collection of locally-made soaps I'd just purchased for us at a healthfood store between the Crest and the Shelter. As I thought about that luxurious soap, I started feeling rich and spoiled. This wasn't just Dove or Zest. It was goats' milk, lavender, honey and almond... and, before long, I was actually going to be clean.

When you start fantasizing about soap and cleanliness becomes a guilty pleasure, that's when it's abundantly clear you've entered the Rock Crest zone. And life will never be the same!

My yard can beat up your yard

Last night, we enjoyed a rare opportunity to just "hang out" with Dan-the-Builder and Chris-the-Architect. We sipped massive quantities of very strong beer at the Hofbrau Haus, ate some German food to the accompaniment of Oom Pah Pah, watched a "Chicken Dance" or two, and yelled over the din to share our thoughts on the Rock Crest project and other memorable experiences and hoped-for future experiences. Aah, so nice!

Today, by the time I made my way to the Crest, with extra water, sandwiches, various materials to drop off, and a kid fully loaded with accessories to keep her occupied while we worked, Chris and Brien were already up on the roof, as Brien demonstrated his new-found talent for stone masonry. Chris watched with rapt attention and many compliments, and we admired the progress together, celebrating the lovely asymmetry of stonework a la Le Cameron. Those were some wonderful moments, up there on the roof, in our little circle of people who can truly appreciate and understand how every project at Rock Crest is its own kind of back-breaking, slow-moving labor of love -- with an emphasis on LABOR.

But, alas, I was not there to enjoy the artwork, and I'd run out of reasons to shirk my duties by the time Chris was leaving. My job for the day: knock down the grass on the hill to a manageable level that would stimulate the roots to do an even better job of establishing themselves and thickening the green carpet.

Daunting. The grass, in some places, was more than 4 feet high. The hill is easily the length of a football field. And the slope is about 40 degrees. It's not a place you can use a push mower -- or, probably even a riding mower. If we had one, that is. My tool: a brush hog attachment to the multi-tool device we've used as a weed whacker and a pole saw. Assembled, it's about 6' long, with a gas-powered motor, a soft-grip handlebar, and a vibration that's only matched by its high-pitched wheezy whine. It came with a shoulder strap that reduces some of the fatigue of holding that 15lb device to "mow" a hill by hand. If only I hadn't accidentally worn that strap home one day and summarily forgotten where I put it.

So, today, it was just me, my Husqvarna ear protectors, vibrating hands, and trembling forearms. And, let me tell you, the first 10 minutes were absolutely killer. The grass was so high that it was difficult to even determine a strategy for cutting it down. Knocking it down by touch only made it harder to cut. Some patches were so thick that I actually had to use the brush hog like a circular saw. After a while, I got into a groove. Hard as the labor was, I started picturing the cutter "swimming" beneath the grassy tide, far enough above the soil that the grass was getting a haircut and not being decapitated, but low enough that the blades could once again stand semi-upright when the trim was completed. Fortunately for me but not for the project, something broke in the starter housing, causing the pull starter to not be able to retract, to my cutting work was done after I was about 25% of the way across the hillside. I did, however, have the equipment to add the finishing touch, though -- raking up all the cut grass and tossing the grass balls off the hillside. B and K came to help me finish with that delightful task.

Doing this kind of ridiculous, extreme manual Rock Crest labor leaves a person a lot of time for contemplation and thought. If you're not careful, it will lend itself to overwhelm and worry, so as I worked, I bolstered myself with empowering thoughts. One of these was "My yard can beat up your yard." I smiled to myself when I thought that -- wondering if that was cocky or well-deserved by a person in my particular situation, knowing that other, sane people were home mowing regular lawns with self-propelled lawn mowers or sitting on the couch watching some kind of Saturday entertainment, or maybe doing the kind of household chores I normally do when I'm not having to do something exhausting and insane at Rock Crest.

I thought about the fact that, if I had a normal metabolism, I'd be 90 pounds soaking wet after all that we've had to do in the course of this odyssey. There's no small, quick, inexpensive, or easy project at Rock Crest. And there's no job that we do as 2 people that doesn't really require 10. But, that's the path we've chosen, and we're plugging onward. If I don't sit down periodically to document the lengths to which we're going to bring this dream into reality, then, like the work that went into the pyramids and other high-labor endeavors, nobody will ever know what it took to get us from point A to point Z. I think we're about to point H...

Meditations on a Fork Lift

Oh, today was a hard workout. As I was literally sucking wind for an hour, trying to make it through my prescribed physical routine, my mind set to wondering why in the world I was so diminished. The answer: bringing rocks to the roof.

Which made me nostalgic for the good old days of... The Fork Lift. Ah, Sweet Mother of Heavy Lifting!

As Brien and I were extracting stones and corner pieces from a container that had filled with rainwater to get something of a more manageable weight to carry to the roof, the reality began to sink in about what it would take to move all the stones we need into places where they can be applied to the chimneys. I'm not averse to physical work, but compared against the ease in using pulleys or lifts, the idea of trips up and down several flights of stairs with boxes and buckets of rocks just seemed wrong.

As we passed the Magnolia tree, I caught sight of the man lift we'd used for much of the high work on the facade of the house in 2010/2011. A crude wooden 3-sided box, that device had attached so nicely to the fork lift that was once a fixture at Rock Crest. There's no way to calculate how many man and muscle hours that contraption spared us and how many places we were able to reach that otherwise would have been impossible to tackle. Life after the Fork Lift has been dismal and slow and arduous by comparison.

So, up we went with our rocks. And then we filled buckets from the rocks already on the 3rd story loft to lift out the window and trek to the center of the roof. Trip after tricky trip Brien made out the window and over to the rock pile... thankfully with no actual tripping as a result.

Ah, sweet Fork Lift. I miss you!

A Box of Rocks

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Some people might think that this describes our level of intelligence for taking on a project like Rock Crest. Some days, when I look around and see the absolutely infinite number of projects and calculate the incalculable number of energy hours and financial expenditures that will be required to get us to "done," I think "What have we gotten ourselves into?"

But, once you're in the middle of the stream -- especially after the extreme effort it's taken to get out there, there's no way you're going to turn back and let it all be for naught! So, on we go.

I've been a terrible diarist about the Rock Crest life, which I'll hope to rectify this year by more frequently documenting what's going on. With progress that's often so slow it's hard to see, it seems strange to chronicle it. But even incremental progress often represents many, many arduous hours, immense thought, and steely commitment, so it all warrants being told.

So, to catch up a bit...

Rock Crest became pretty quiet about a month ago. My Dad finished up his pet projects, including creating a permanent staircase off the Study bedroom, ready to be doweled and stained when the time is right. Then he and Mom set off on their trip back to California and another many months of work ahead preparing my

grandmother's house for sale. The dust had only begun to settle at the Crest before Dan was back at work, creating the chimney extension to vent the back fireplace off the Solarium.

When we raised the roof to three-story height, that left the ancestral chimney about 15' too short. Phase 1 was to build the structural framing for the chimney. Next came the pipes and venting and internals. Once that was completed, it was time for the external beautification.

First, Brien applied metal lath around the Tyvek-wrapped surface. Then a skim coat was applied. Then, Dan and Joe set to work mixing mortar, lifting it to the mini-roof and scaffolding via the pulley, and selecting, gathering, and hauling rocks up to adorn the outside.

Rocking the chimney has been a major undertaking -- what else is new? What at Rock Crest hasn't taken the last ounce of strength, mental stamina, or intestinal fortitude to complete? First, there's the matter of integrating the existing chimney stones with the salvaged stones and cultured stone corners.

Then, there's the challenge of arranging the stones, marble, bricks, geodes, and other materials to mimic the whimsy LeCameron used when he created the original stonework. There's also the matter of the stones being different thicknesses and weights, with different aptitudes for adhering to the skim coat. Also, you can't use a recently-applied stone as the basis for the next stone course, so you've got to allow plenty of time for the mortar to dry.

The irregularity of sizes and shapes also requires LOTS of mortar for the joints between the stones -- and the mortar can only be mixed in small enough batches so that it doesn't dry out. The more mortar, the more heavy buckets need to be hoisted up from the ground to the ledge and the scaffold, where Dan's been crouching and balancing, and periodically losing grip on his trowel, only to have it fall all the way down to the ground, where he's got to reclaim it! Then it's down 3 stories to the back yard and then back up again.

So, it's no wonder at all that it's taken 3 weeks to get to the point of completing the chimney rock just around the small portion below the West eaves! What a work -- and what a masterwork!

Dan's artistry is laudable -- and I hope it will be something that people will be able to appreciate for generations. I only wish each arduous element of this construction could remain observable, and I wish I'd done a better job of documenting things as they occurred. But fatigue and the daily grind of trying to maintain life in multiple spheres just got the best of me, I guess.

Today's special treat was gathering the rocks Brien had already brought up from the ground to the 3rd floor into buckets so that we could lift them through the East loft windows onto the roof, in preparation for Dan's next phase with the back chimney. We also had to bring some stones up from the front porch in a big container, up 2 flights of stairs and then out onto the roof.

Hopefully, this will make for some quicker progress as Dan enjoys a bit more ease of movement, walking around the chimney -- instead of crouching for hours on end on a narrow scaffold!

Watching and Waiting

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It's 2012! Amazing to think that by the end of this month, it will have been three years since we first started down the rocky road of Rock Crest!

Usually, when I sit down to chronicle the Rock Crest happenings it's because something's been happening. However, at this moment, we're more or less in a holding pattern, waiting on several very critical developments.

During late November and throughout the month of December, our indefatigable architect Chris continued to wrangle with the Plans Examiner to finalize approval on several structural elements that warranted clarification, by the terms of the Great County of Hamilton. Of course, if such Great County were to understand the construction magnificence of the Neil and Dan team, they'd come by and bless every aspect of the property with their magical fairy dust and let us get on with things.

Once the Plans Examiner is satisfied, then we move forward to the Building Inspector and hope to remove what became stuck in his craw when he made a surprised and unannounced visit to the property earlier this year, holding outdated plans and struggling to catch his breath from wild-west construction he thought had taken place. With all our plans, documents, structural engineering assertions, photographs, and personally guided tours through his hands-on inspections, we will hopefully smooth down his ruffled peacock feathers toward PROGRESS!!

Since Eagle Creek moved on in October, we've made other sorts of strides at the Crest. Neil and Brien have been diligently taping the seams of the SIPS panels to prevent moisture penetration on the inside of the house, and they have painfully worked the ducting in to prepare for the installation of the primary wood-burning fireplace in the living room. We also finally managed to get the hot tub moved from our friends the Jodys' home and seated it right outside the office window, with a lovely view of the hillside. Mojitos, anyone?

When -- and I mean the very moment -- the inspections are behind us, signed, sealed and delivered, we will have the pleasure of getting the roof shingled, if the weather permits. Otherwise, we either re-tarp or just take our chances with the weather of the next several months until we can get those shingles in place.

With the house battened down, we can feel confident to FINALLY proceed to making the shell a home. We will need to apply interior tongue and groove timbers to the tallest ceilings and enlist some help to drywall the entire house. Our plumber still has some work to complete, as do our electricians, but, at least their rough-in inspections are done, with a gold star and a couple of smiley faces.

So, onward we go! It's Rock Crest '12, and we're ready to roll!

Rock Crest Renaissance

Renaissance Past

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