We had a good rain yesterday afternoon. A power line broke during the storm, which left us without power for about three hours.
Eva was crocheting a gift for a friend who is moving away. She did not let a little power outage stop her work. Here she is, crocheting by flashlight.
Luckily, our slab was poured the day before! The weather has been so hot, the contractor spread hay all over the fresh concrete, and we have to water it a couple of times a day. The rain watered it yesterday!
Those heavy stem walls you see in the picture are going to support compressed earthen blocks which we will make with a totally fabulous machine manufactured by AECT of San Antonio, Texas.
We had to have a concrete pump for this last concrete pour. That pump was a thing of beauty. Mr. Hammer, the owner and operator, used a remote control device to move the pump around. When he raised it up over the trees and moved it over our slab, it looked like a slow and graceful mechanical ballet dance. Gorgeous! In this picture, the concrete truck is dumping concrete into the pump.
This prickly pear cactus, which grows on our new place, is the native home of the cochineal beetle. The rain made the bugs’ webby homes a little soggy. Usually they are pure white, but the wetness has made the beautiful bluish red show through. You can probably see the color better in the close up, below.
Cochineal revolutionized the dyeing industry in Europe a few hundred years ago. The tiny beetles made the best red dye ever, until chemical dyes came along.
