... and we're off!!

Last Thursday, I wrote the biggest check of my life: We now officially have a construction loan.

On Friday, we met with our Hammer & Hand guys, plus my friend Rachel (our landscape architect) about what was happening next, where things would go, what trees would be removed and where we would put logs, debris, poison oak, and so on.

On Saturday, Peter and a couple other Hammer & Hand guys came out in the morning to take down a few smaller trees and clear some brush. In the early afternoon, John, Eric and Bryan started clearing trees: digging out around the roots, knocking them down with a Cat, cutting them to the appropriate size(s), and arranging them -- branches and root balls on the burn pile (now so massive that we're consulting the fire department), logs in one area, and the root balls and logs we're keeping to play with/on in another area. They worked until it was dark on Saturday, and again from dawn to dusk on Sunday -- and still didn't quite get it all done. A stand of 5 or 6 skinny trees remains, plus a few trees that were knocked down but not staged. Hopefully our new excavator will be able to manage these last bits later this week, so that Bryan and John can come up this weekend and clear them away.

And we'll officially break ground either late this week or early next week. Really.