Breaking Ground

Sunday 4 March 2012

Well, against all expectation, it actually happened.  Gerasimos turned up at 8.30 sharp and was down the field changing the bucket on the digger before we'd had breakfast.  I rushed out to draw the last couple of lines with the tail end of the spray paint, and when I looked up, he'd started the first trench!

No sign of Odyseuss' palace, no sign of anything except rather nice soil.  Gerasimos agreed to keep the damage minimal, accepting the right of wildflowers to quiet enjoyment, much to my surprise.  He also offered to save the pear tree, by digging another hole for it and then lifting it out, but the tree is so riddled with ants that we didn't think it would survive, so we decided not to disturb another patch of ground for it.

We asked for a big mound of earth, rather than having it spread around the site, and that was okay.  He made very neat cuts and kept disturbance to a minimum.  At one point he called me over and I eventually worked out he was saying he had found a seam of good soil 'for growing flowers', did I want it put somewhere separately?  I agreed enthusiastically.

Constantine eventually caught up with the action, arriving about 10 ish, and Gerasimos asked him why we were digging so deep, wouldn't we rather build the house up than drop it in a hole?  I said we didn't want retaining walls, as they would probably have to be concrete and that was not what we wanted.  But Gerasimos and Constantine both insisted that the moved earth would form a solid bank and we could put the foundations on that.  It would be drier and healthier, said Gerasimos.  Again we bowed to his experience and agreed, I would much prefer to be higher anyway, but we hadn't thought it possible.

During a break for water, Constantine showed Gerasimos our cob building books, while we sat on the decking.  We all expected the usual disbelief but he said, 'like they used to build in the villages?  There are some earth houses in Lefkas town'.

After the workforce had left (it was Sunday, after all), Dave and I shared a quiet moment pouring a libation of red wine into the hole and making a wish.  Then we noticed Schrodinger was making his own offering just along the trench!  You could just sense those cats thinking, 'At last the monkey-people have installed a proper litter tray!'

The Winnebago kids were very thrilled with it all, too.  We fed everyone potatoes and cheese and shared some bottles of wine in the glorious sunshine while the kids got all interactive with the new landscape.

We moved ourselves down the field as the sun got lower, until we were hard up by the thicket at the NE corner, when we finally had to accept it was evening as the sun set over the abandoned digger.