Well day 5 was a banner day, more photos!

Well it was a good day yesterday, I had to wait till this morning to get photos, got rained out yesterday for photos. The block work is done and it is awesome, Juan is a whizz with the blocks and the seat rebar.

Juan not only finished the block work he also cleaned up the trenching dirt and put it inside the garden. In Costa Rica the blocks are not 1/2 as wide as long so blocks need cutting to do the staggered block construction like in the states, they are also metric, 12cm X 20cm X 40cm (4.72"X7.87"X15.75"). Also the blocks get filled with cement top to bottom which with the rebar makes the whole thing really strong and in wall construction makes them more resistant to earth quakes.

 

Someone ask for a photo including my wife so I asked my lovely lady to sit on the blocks to show how the height of the blocks are for sitting. The cement seat top will only add 2" to the height of the garden. Again the whole idea is to not only provide a retaining enclosure for the raised be garden but to save bending over to save the ol' back. You can also see that she could easily reach the middle of the garden from the sides.

 

Well just goes to show you, she couldn't resists hamming it up with one of the girls. The hens like the attention, they come running just about every time the door opens. Caroline likes the milk from the small coconuts called pipas here. She cuts the end off the pipa then drains them, then splits them to get the meat. You don't get all the meat out so they are tossed in the backyard for the chickens who love to peck the meat out, good for their health too. Once the pipas dry they are added to the wood in the stove as they burn very good.

The next page will show the wood framing for the cement seat top, that should be day 6 of the project. I number the days which are not days of the week consecutive but just a way to keep track of how many days for construction and to make some sense here. That is the way people can ask me questions and I can tell which part of the construction they are asking about.

Here is the location of our home north of San Ramon, we are about 6 kilometers from downtown San Ramon. Anyone wants the Google Earth pin location for our home, send me an email.

Here is a photo of the village north of us, Los Angeles Norte. Our local police department has the local office there.