Sunday, August 31, 2008

Down by the old Mill Stream

The stream project is moving toward completion. Oscar and Elbow (aka Abel) have completed the following work: cleaned out the whole length of the stream; laid the first half with our concrete chunks rescued from demolition; built up the culvert at the beginning of the property - poured footings and directed the water; concreted in the beginning of the stream; repaired the road holes at all over passes; built a drain to dry out the wet spot in the grove; removed all the tires and shored up the sides with concrete bags; built new gates with nifty wheel operation for two spots and also built a grate for one spot in the fence. I picked out rocks at Southwest Boulder and will send Oscar over to actually select rocks that he and the crew can move. We will get one ton of the largest rocks they can manage, then one ton of large cobbles (15" across) and one or two tons of medium sized rocks. Scattering them along the stream should improve appearance and make it look pretty good. Planting will be a challenge because so many weeds want to grow there..it's wet and really fertilized.

It's satisfying to have this job done. The "stream" had become a dirty ditch and now is an attractive feature of the grove. Between this improvement and Jaime's work shoring up branches and keeping order, the grove looks really good. I hope we will be ablet to keep it all up. There's a lot of investment made but the Rancho will be our permanent and last home, so it should be good looking and comfortable.

No comments:

Post a Comment