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all shale
Wednesday, September 17 2008
Today's goal for the greenhouse hole was to complete the footing trenches for the masonry that will form much of the greenhouse's walls. A third of the footing trench was already done, since I didn't have to dig any lower than bedrock. But I found that it didn't take much more digging to reach bedrock for the entire periphery of the hole. All of this bedrock is shale, the kind containing random fractures and some penetrations by roots, dirt, and fungi. I cracked open some today and found a beautiful branching array of white fungal hypha. In other places the charcoal-grey shale has decomposed to a light grey clay.
For those wondering why I'm not encountering more bluestone, I should mention that our house sits on a region of geological transition between the Appalachian Ridge and Valley province and the Allegheny Plateau province. At about the elevation of our house, the shale (which is somewhat folded, accounting for the off-level floor of the bedrock beneath my greenhouse) vanishes beneath a nearly-flat deposit of bluestone, which forms the obdurate capstone of the plateau that extends from behind our house all the way to the Ashokan Reservoir, five miles away.
Now that my foundation trench was so deep, I was forced to begin deepening the drainage ditch running from it to the edge of the escarpment. The ten to fifteen feet of ditch nearest the hole will now have to be over three feet in depth, and most of the rest of it will have to be about two feet deep.
This evening Gretchen brough me home some takeaway pupusas from the pupuseria on Broadway in Kingston. This was the first time I'd ever had them as a to-go item, and it was also the first time I'd had them stuffed only with beans (normally I get them with beans and cheese). Without cheese, I found them a little dry, but they were still plenty edible, particularly when combined with cortida (shredded pickled cabbage) and green salsa, both of which Gretchen had gotten in little side containers.
This evening I took a bath and shaved for the first time since back in August. I'd actually trimmed my beard with scissors a few days ago so as to make it easier for my razor and to leave less of a wookiee in the bathtub.
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