Driveway

I now have a driveway that can be used in rainy weather. The crushed stone was delivered and one dump truck load covered the essential part. It is such a long driveway, that I wasn’t sure how much would be covered. I’ll drive on it a while to pack it down, then we’ll get another load and cover more, hopefully also over the muddy part of the traffic circle next to Sharon’s house. She has curbing between the lawn and driveway, but nothing back into the meadow, so I am using crusher run, a combination of gravel and crushed concrete which is porous and stays in place. We felt this was the most economical, the grid we had considered would take too long to have grass grow into it, and we have a very low spot that gets swampy with heavy rain, which the stone should prevent.

driveway across meadow (dome is not leaning, my bad camera skills)

 

driveway across meadow from dome

We have a neighborhood family of crows with the biggest crow I’ve seen. It’s nearly the size of a raven, must be the grandaddy who has survived a long time. Rabbits and squirrels are wandering near the dome, one rabbit was so big that one of my cats growled at it. I guess he’s never seen a rabbit before and it was bigger than he considered prey.

One bit of wildlife I am not happy to find is fire ants. It is taking a bit of adapting on my part to be able to tolerate them. I plan to kill what I can near the house, as Sharon does, plus she is trying to keep them out of her flowerbeds. I have mostly stopped wearing sandals in the yard, since slip-on canvas shoes are much easier to brush off and kick off when they swarm onto my foot. Right now I have over half a dozen bites on one ankle from standing too near a nest, not even on it. I am doing my annual spray around the inside and outside of the house, to keep the crawlies outside. One creature I hope not to see are timber rattlers. We definitely have black snakes, so hope the poisonous are far from the house. I don’t mind black snakes, but Sharon does. I have more insect and spider phobias. I had enough of palmetto bugs in Florida, I sure hope we are far enough inland and near the mountains that those monster bugs are not around.

The cats are using the windows in the doors, I always see one or two pairs of ears and eyes watching me pull up in the car. They like looking out onto the patio and back yard, too. For older cats, they do like to stay awake and watch outside.

view of green field across the highway, from top half of bathroom window

Another Inspection Passed

Another milestone – we passed inspection for the slab. Tomorrow the concrete finisher will be out for the pour, and make my floor nice and smooth.

approved for slab

Today while waiting for the inspector, the crew worked on filling in things – 500 feet of water line and next is the old cistern. Any leftover crushed stone from the cistern fill will help the existing driveway.

For the new, very long driveway, we are looking at a product that will allow us to drive on the grass and not require gravel or paving. It would be better for the environment, allowing water to drain through normally, and would be less expensive. I don’t know yet about lifetime maintenance. It does allow us to mow right over it once the grass grows up through the mesh. http://www.boddingtonsonline.com/products/grass-ground-reinforcement/grass-reinforcement-protection/turfprotecta-turf-reinforcement-mesh.php