Rocking the north wall

Window seat rocks

Rocks, as it turns out, are heavier than I remember.  I had left the largest, prettiest rocks for the north wall, and some of them were so big I couldn't even move them, let alone lift them.  Thank goodness for TJ.  

3D jigsaw puzzle

It was tough work in full sun and we were wilted by lunchtime but we got it done. 

I should point out that none of these rocks come from the bush.  They were all left close to the house by the previous owners and we think they originally came from the house excavation.  Even so, rocks are an important element for biodiversity so we checked carefully and didn't leave anyone homeless.

I wasn't kidding about the scorpions

When it was too hot to work outside I had a bit of a play with the sub-soil I got from my brother's place.  I started with a basic sediment test, which had some surprising results.

Sediment test - our mud (left) versus Hepburn mud (right)

I tested it against our our own soil, hoping to get some idea if it had more or less clay - I was looking for more clay.  That's our soil on the left, which has settled into three or four distinct layers - sand and grit at the bottom, then a wide band of silt/clay topped with a narrow band of pure clay.  Then there's a layer of muddy water on top and some floating organic matter.

The Hepburn soil on the right behaved very differently.  Other than a tiny layer of clean water on the top, it all remained in a thick suspension for hours.  I think it has so much clay, nothing has settled out of it.

As soon as it was cool enough to move again, we went down to the dairy and got some cow manure so we could make a test-batch of render with the Hepburn soil.  I tried it out on the gaps in the east wall where choughs had eaten the render.

New mud patches

The test-batch of render was very sticky and great to work with - 100% easier.  I also used the sugar cane mulch instead of chaff, to make it less edible (!) and that also works just fine.  Anything this good has to come with a catch, so I predict that this high-clay mix will crack a lot when it dries.  But honestly, I don't care, so long as it goes on easily and stays on.  I can fill cracks in the next layer.

Rendering around the local rocks shows very clearly that this is not the local soil.  The red-brown walls harmonised with the landscape, because they were made of the same stuff.  But I can cope with the colour.

 Tomorrow I'll do some more render if I get up early enough, but it's going to get stupidly hot so we'll go back to town for a couple of days.