No progress

I haven't been a lazy blogger - there's just nothing to report. The retaining walls were supposed to be underway, but the engineer needs to sign off the excavation first and his wife just had a baby, so he's taken some time off. We've been busy on the weekends, what with popping up to Auckland for Ellerslie and down to Timaru for the rose festival, so we we hadn't checked on the progress until last weekend. When we realised nothing had happened we talked to the builder. We then expected the boxing to be started this week, but yesterday - still nothing! Time to get very grumpy!

More digging

If you thought it was a big hole last time - it's a lot bigger now! They've taken it down another metre and excavated the basement. The result is that most of the section will actually be flat (so much for all my plans for gardening on a slope). The topsoil has all been set a side so that it can be redistributed once all the digging is done. They still have a bit of tidying up of the downhill slope to do, then they should be ready to start the retaining wall this week. I hope this isn't too boring - wait until it is nearly finished and you might be able to watch the paint dry!

The start

It is finally starting. For 6 months all we could say was "still waiting for the building permit", but it finally came through last week, and by Saturday we could see this:

And this:

That's me, saying "look - no stones". After six years living on a recycled riverbed it's going to be quite a novelty to garden without needing to use a pick axe. The street is on the right and I'm standing about where the back wall of the garage will be.

This is looking towards the street, taken about from where our bedroom will be. That's the Southern Alps in the background.