April 22: Here are a few up-close glimpses of the sandhills, for those of you who aren't familiar with this part of Texas. The bare patch of sand in the back is where the old house used to be. That tree was right in front of it. That tree is gone now. I wasn't sad to see it go, because the right fork of it was dead anyway. All that over-exposed white stuff in the foreground is typical sandhill "topsoil," that is, plain white sand. Oh yeah, that yucca or whatever on the left edge is gone now, too (hurray!).
Still April 22: Up one of our "driveways," here's the old house sitting on the paved county road. It took them another day to make sure everything was legal for the highway before they hauled it out. The truck is facing the wrong direction. We are about 1/4 mile from the end of a dead-end road. He had to go down to the end, see-saw himself around in the turning circle, and then head back out to the highway.
April 27: Concrete runners for the new house in a bed of fresh, new caliche. We also got one of our "driveways" (cough) "paved" with caliche because the cement trucks couldn't handle the sand. All that forest in back is ours. It extends another 600 feet or so back. If I had used a decent camera, you would probably have been able to make out my ham antenna somewhere around that clear space in the middle.
May 2: New house on blocks, my son running up to it. Sandy "driveway" all torn to heck from the big trucks driving around. It's somewhat smoother now. My Sanctum is the window just to the left of the front door. The big tree to the right of my son is still there, although one fork of it was also severely damaged from a lightning strike not long after we first moved here. That would put the lightning strike sometime in 1994. I think that other tree that used to be right in front of the old house was damaged by lightning, too, but that was before we lived here. The back of the new house lines up exactly where the back of the old house was, it just sticks forward a lot farther. The big hickory that I call my "barbecue tree" is off-camera, a little right and farther back from that forked oak. I call it that because I set my smoker up in its shade when I barbecue during hot weather. There was one other hickory on the other driveway that had to be removed to bring in the new house. It was just as big, possibly bigger, than my barbecue tree.
Also May 2: Another shot with the kids on the temporary front steps. There's a much nicer permanent porch there now. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the temporary steps, because they're pretty solid, I must admit. I heard an elderly aunt of mine who lives in a trailer needs some new steps. If they fit okay, I'll probably give them to her.
Still May 2: Close-up on the front door with the kids making "silly faces."I'll try to take more photos this week to show how it looks now that everything is pretty much finished.
Very cool.
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