Keep your hearting level.

 

Taking a break from the temple to discuss hearting. For anyone who builds dry stone walls there is a better, more applicable version of the old adage 'putting the cart before the horse'. 

If a waller mounds the hearting stones up anywhere inside the wall higher than the outer building-stones in that course, it obviously will leave parts of the inside of the wall protruding, and thus be difficult to place any stones properly on top of that course  (or be able to place builder-stones far enough into the wall ) . 

So, one must remember not to put the heart-ing 'higher' than the course.

But remember, you still have to thoroughly heart 'before' the course is completed, and/or before you go on to fit more stones on top.

The inner quoins and voussoirs of the seat niches

"Construction and fabrication of quoins was essentially same as for inner doorways" writes Mr Adcock, " with one big wrinkle… the ‘tie stones’ in the gap between the seat quoins spanned the whole gap.  This was another mad idea brought about by my concern that 2 shorter white granite runners would not leave much of a gap and they’d need to be the same height if it wasn’t going to get very messy, so why not run them all the way? " 

" Spanning was a mad solution which had knock on, problematic effects.  As with the shorter runners the curve was marked by eye/approximated and over that length there was plenty of room for error on my part. Looking back I suppose I could have sat down and worked out the supposed radius for the given height and worked out the offset for that length of arc etc.  Sometimes life is too short and even I resort to guesswork.  What’s more I don’t think it would have worked very well. I think perfectly executed stones of that size on a generally imperfect interior would probably have looked completely out of place, and thus in a way would have been completely, or at best far too, imperfect."

"The voussoirs here were quite long - going deep into the back of the seat opening the second voussoir on the left seat was a bit strange, we used a stone with the natural shape we needed, which didn’t really need angling.  I think we hoped we could carry on this way, on the more rustic inside.  However it didn’t work out like that, and whilst we didn’t cut uniform perfect extrados, that particular one really stands out for its 'imperfection'. " 

"Having mentioned the problem with cutting keystones here, the imperfections of the voussoirs initially made the idea of fashioning the keystones somewhat daunting, The solution was to have the keystone in two parts, placing and refashioning the front section was easy enough, dropping the back section in and then removing it for a bit more shaping would be another matter… The solution was to cut a shallow groove in it and for David Claman to lower it in (and pull it out) with a loop of wire."

 

"There was something wrong with a number of the voussoirs in terms of curved face and batter. Something went awry. This whole section caused problems for subsequent building as there was often a stone in the way of getting the profile just right and subsequent stones had to be offset from the profile… I was forever fiddling with flat spots and far less than perfect stones that were annoying me"

"I notice a wire from the centre pole in this photo… which reminds me that that was how I attempted to maintain some sort of curve for the inside voussoirs, using it as a rough guide (given that the pole was not necessarily vertical or in the centre (lol) or the wire was perfectly horizontal etc.  Basically it was more a case of checking the offsets on both sides were about the same for each pair of voussoirs rather than trying to make sure they were in exactly the right spot."

Seating For Two

More from Sean on the details of the Temple. "I think we decided on seat(s) fairly early on in the design process, I certainly drew a scaled drawing to work out if/how to fit a full seat rather than just a shallow perch.

I had to work out how much the wall would have curved in at seat level as the seat would need to project beyond this (my table of offsets helped here) to make (potential) feet placement more comfortable. And then how thick the wall would be at its narrowest point in to see how much space we would have to build… (not enough for a double wall but with plenty of 2ish inch flagstone slabs about, we could sit one vertically and then build the outer wall up against it, which makes for a more comfortable back anyway. Finding single slabs was to prove difficult, but even this worked out for the best… more on that later.

How did we hold the slabs in place??  I can’t remember and have no photos of this stage for some reason.

As I said, Im not sure when we settled on 2 seats… early on maybe… I think we always intended to use the double-wide wall between the back arch and the left arch. Two seat niches made sense. At some point we decided to have the seats same width as doors, as the gap between the doors was almost 5 seats wide it could be divided up quite well from an aesthetic viewpoint and we had the forms for arch from the doors to boot.  The height of the arch was simple expedient of working out a sensible height not to hit your head when sitting down or getting up.  

Seat base… well John came up with a plan. After some discussion of using more of the Sidney Peak mica schist bigger slabs, which in the end didn’t feel right, he found the lovely polished slab from a boulder of Art Horvath had sawn. It had an almost perfect inner curve and width, as if it was meant t be. Then the second Art Horvath slice from the same block, which was been used as a table, but Peter our client readily agreed to it being half buried into the seating niche. We are so lucky that he goes for these mad ideas. 

I always think back to the pyromid we built in 2011 and 2012, where we more or less buried amazing Romero lengths (sticks) to form the curb for the floor, with only a tip exposed , a detail most will miss.  These little touches add so much, but will be missed by so many.  Anyway Sidney Peak would have definitely been too imperfect for the seats in the Temple, and the end choice was nearly perfect.

 

Concaveman

 

My friend Sean is a kind of concaveman 

He builds, with the minimum of tools, better than anyone can.

He scribes a wall that's not just curved inside, 

but has concaved vertical batter right up its sides. 

It goes gently in, and then steps gently out. 

He goes up and over, and has no doubt   

He surrounds himself with concavity

Gradually, defying gravity.  

The wall wraps round him in concentric courses . 

Holding back all nature's forces, 

From caving in his womb of stone, 

Within the sphere of the unknown.

The Keystones- It's all fabrication.

When writing to me about the four keystones we needed to fabricate, Sean Adcock wrote  "All I remember is that they were fraught with potential disaster ". 

He explains. "However exact you are trying to be with 'sawn' voussoirs, imperfections creep in, even if you start off from both sides of the wooden former with everything parallel, a millimetre here and a 32nd of an inch there, and even though the voussoirs still might fit fairly nicely, and no-one can see any problems arising ,you might still get to measuring for the middle keystone, and the two faces you need to fit the keystone into are not parallel. One end is perhaps a sixteenth of an inch wider than the other, but you know the keystone has to be cut to fit, and there is NO wriggle room, and there will be no spare material available to make a replacement keystone. So then yes, it IS potentially a disaster."  

John fabricating a keystone

Sean goes on to write. " For that reason, no-one was keen to attempt to do a keystone for fear of botching it up. But  the four chisellers were given one each to do." 

"Needless to say I was not one of them, in many ways my job was to create problems for others to solve - and hats off to John, Mark, David and Kevin.  Each was just left to get on with it... and all the imperfections were perfectly sorted out."

        Mark Ricard dressing one of the key keystones  

David Claman - another key keystone fabricator 

And the fabulous Kevin Carman

Outside voussoir pattern differing from inside arches

 

On the outside arched opening the treatment of the voussoirs,    was different. Sean writes " After a couple of stepped voussoirs had been cut for the outside and with the initial placements done ( and NOT having their tops all ending along a continuous slanted joint, but rather staggered) I saw the potential for the original 'triangular' design again .

John readily accepted the idea, and of course added a twist with the idea of projecting them.  After a bit of head scratching and checking I agreed it could be done, thank goodness for the wiggle room (provided by the extra bit of length in the blocks) and the reduced height of the internal voussoirs.  John also suggested we should have a tall keystone on the inside arches.  The step increased the width of the wall, as did the increased curve at the top of the profile and the stones were not quite wide enough, so rather than finish at a point, they were in effect truncated,  but even this imperfection worked and makes these keystones stand out even more I think.

I always liked the look of the original stepped voussoirs, although the regularity of the steps was a concern, as it would mean a lot of regular coursing, a lot of similar size stone and not a lot of space to manoeuvre this between the two doors on the inside and no basalt breaking up the stonework.   To make life somewhat easier on the inside we had, sometime before this visit, settled on a simple curved arch, much less wasted stone compared to the original concept of having the motif front and back…but this wasted my initial calculations,

but a good decision on the whole, I think having all the internal arches over doors and seats ‘even’,  makes it cohesive, and remove the necessity for completely regular coursing.  

The keystones… did we have separate blocks for these?  All I remember is that they were fraught with  potential disaster

 

Personally I think the eventual design really sings, producing a striking motif, far better than I imagined at any point of the process, and I think in many ways they exemplify how this project worked in terms of design, tweaking and execution.  An incredble symbiosis of ideas and designs, where we made changes with very quick additional tweaks and realisation of what was going to work.  Conceivably we were just making it up as we went along and just lucky.  Alternatively  we always seemed to know where it was going sometimes singing different songs (lyrics)  but always to the same tune and often producing interesting harmonies.  I think that we usually work like this , but somehow on this project for me it felt as if it really came together in spades."

 

The Voussoirs

The Voussoirs?  Sean and I found it harder to remember how we actually did them. We have more photos of the making and placing of them than any other aspect of the project and yet can't quite work out what was going on.  

Sean writes “ I think my own trepidation and associated stress levels were at a build high with them.  The voussoirs were going to be made from pre-cut blocks of granite from art city… for ‘simplicity’ we needed one size block to suit all voussoirs and another for the springers, there was little room for manoeuvre or mistakes.

Initially there was a lot of head scratching… we had started the build - and so had settled on actual dimensions  in terms of height and width of opening, before we settled on the arches.  Having established batters was important because with increased height there was going to be a point where they were actually getting wider as the curve exceeded the 1:10 of the outside.   So I sat down at home in Wales and calculated what maximum widths would be, and quickly realized that the keystone (who’s top would be the highest point of the arch and hence the widest point) would need to be longer than the rest for example.  

During design it was decided that there could be separate sets of voussoirs - front and back- that interlocking them (making them throughs) would be far to  complicated so we chose to have them present a straight seam when viewed from underneath, an so each would have a slightly different length.

I drew scale drawings, made all sorts of calculations and notes based on projected sizes provide by John on sketch-up and eventually came up with a size for the voussoir blocks, allowing for removal of waste for shaping plus a bit of wiggle room in case we needed to amend anything- psychic, or just tuned into the way we work, can you actually plan how to ‘work on the hoof’? I even drew a scale curve for the springers to make sure that when placed at right angles to the door the tail of the springer would still be outside the curve so that it could actually be cut from a given block -basically this inside wall edge was much longer than the exposed edge on the curved inside… the straight outside presented no such problem. " 

"One thing I was sure of from the outset was that however hard I/we tried the two openings would not be perfect there would inevitably be some variation of widths cross and/or through as it turned out one was close to perfect width wise, but with a slight difference through, the other was closer though but with an inch or so difference across. These all complicated the build in terms of centring the forms, having to prop the odd voussoir slightly struggling to get the pre-cut blocks to accommodate the springers, introducing all sorts of imperfections."

"When it came to processing the voussoirs it was decided to utilize one sawn edge and cut the other face at an angle and adjust the base to the correct angle to make life easier.  Much sawing, kerfing, chiselling and grinding to get rid of the waste and produce another clean edge.  Nasty, noisy, dusty if my stress levels were at a high, I think John was probably heading off the chart, his sticking at it and often driving it at this point is one of the greatest and yet invisible aspects of the whole build.  In the end I think the clean cuts and the eventual motif set everything else off and was well worth the angst.  

Back to the actual process, once the springers were cut the block was placed on the former on which I had marked the curve of the inside face by eye – pure guesswork given that the radius of the curve would in effect be changing as height was gained, but again as long as it was not obviously too straight or overly curved it would be imperfect but I hoped would look right as long as it ‘flowed’."  

"Initially I couldn’t remember how the angle of the second face was determined.  For the springers I think I ‘simply’ aimed a straight edge (level) at the centre of the circle for the arc of the former, but that was a foot or so below the actual bottom edge of the form and marked the line with that.  Clearly not a tenable approach for the whole process.  I had started putting these notes together a couple of days ago and then I had a restless night full of voussoirs, dust and nonsense which include John’s beard – possibly instigated by my own current attempts to grow one- , but clearly in the middle was a wooden template.  This was used to get the second angle, with the base slightly cut to get a better angle onto the former.  It didn’t all go according to plan. " 

                         

"All the voussoirs were cut for the front and placed before further processing (except the keystone) – that is batter of the face – a process repeated (more or less in tandem) for the inside.

I can’t remember how I marked the curve of the face on the inside voussoirs, clearly it wasn’t with my profile as the wooden form stuck out and was in the way… maybe a template?  I have a picture of the keystone in place with markings… maybe I aimed at this… One edge would certainly have been marked by scribing against the previous stone, it is clear that there was quite a bit of variation in the end.  When viewed close up the curve gets distorted, and the voussoirs are not of a uniform height and extrados does not necessarily parallel the intrados.  All sorts of imperfections but it wasn’t worth trying to iron out the minor discrepancies given the dangers inherent in 'killing' a stone."

The accumulative connection.

Recently on Instagram I posted a photo of the Temple of Imperfections. I explained in the text that the installation was  called the Temple of Imperfections, because of all the many imperfections that can still result in a kind of perfection that can't be achieved any other way.

We imagine that the almost imperceptible, deviations from perfectly level, perfectly straight, perfectly curved , perfectly this or that, may all serendipitously mesh together and cancel each other. 

I would venture to say there isn't an imperfection that can't be corrected with another. While there may be many planned attempts at correcting something so that it nears perfection, there is still the likelihood the 'imperfect fix' might actually create something closer to perfection, than the over-planned, tightly prescribed, uncompromising fix. 

When laying stones, it is possible to come to what we would accept as 'perfectly level', by having stacked that course of stones along the top of several rows of stones below, that were decidedly, 'off level'.

In writing now, in several blog instalments, about how the temple came to be made, and about this concept of accumulative imperfections, I realize that it is a kind of nod to (as well as a bit of a departure from) the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi.

Richard Powell, author of Wabi Sabi Simple, tells us -"wabi-sabi nurtures all that is authentic, by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect", and that imperfections are to be appreciated as part of life. 

Imperfections in fact, within a craft such as dry stone walling, can create works that actually exceed the level of 'correctness' we were striving for.

They (imperfections) may not just have to be 'accepted', but in fact be anticipated, as making the perfection of the thing seem very close

In the process of trying to build the temple we tried to embrace this idea as we strived (and yet more importantly 'chilled' ) about the perceived allowable tolerances that were needed to attain a certain aesthetic perfection. In the process we saw a wonderful thing happening. A kind of self-fulfilling happenstance. Combinations of self-cancelling discrepancies 'happened' enough times that we almost came to expect them.

It was this aspect of the temple building that led us to come up with the name. At first I suggested it be called - The temple of Imperfection (singular) but Sean said that wasn't quite right. (it was imperfect? )  The temple, however, with all our hard work measuring, cutting and fitting, was not completely imperfect. If anything it was incompletely perfect, (ie. made up of lots of imperfections). And so we agreed to call it the Temple of Imperfections.

Sean Adcock measuring and remeasuring and allowing for imperfection

And here I venture into the second wabi-sabi principle. The reality that in life, nothing is complete. Nothing in the universe including  'creation', and  'creativity',  is finished!  

This would seem true of the build we started at the Stonezone, in California , in 2019, as the project has been spread over a period of four years, with building sessions lasting three or four weeks each year, so far.  And, here's the thing - it still isn't finished. There is so much waiting to be done, yet. 

But it certainly looks finished.  Is this just happenstance? The thing that has certainly happened , has become and is becoming, an accumulation of 'incompletenesses'  ( word ?) and yet in a very real way it has attained a feeling of completeness.

The third reality of the temple (and in wabi-sabi) is that everything is impermanent. Even though we are working with what is essentially permeant stone material, granite, mica schist, basalt  sandstone and marble, and we know that it is not going to last. But for all extensive purposes it will outlast (outlive?) a lot of other things. And here's the thing. It will outlast all our impermanence.  

Those of us who worked and continue to work on the temple are temporal. We wallers and masons and sculptors have gathered together as a dedicated group of impermanent mortals. And yet all our accumulative impermanences have ironically created something very lasting.

Again the three principles of Wabi Sabi are - nothing is perfect, nothing is completely finished, and nothing is permanent somehow accommodate our understanding of the essence of the temple.   It could have been called the Temple of Wabi-Sabi because the structure exists as a kind of accumulation of the realities of life -Imperfection, Incompleteness, Impermanence. And if the universe embraces these three naturally occurring, what shall we call them, limitations? ironies? conundrums? discrepancies?...  then so do we! 

My hope is that the temple, may, with its myriad of discrepancies, given time, and skill, (if they don't already, eventually) all cancel each other and create a very satisfyingly balanced result.  

 

Consistent Imperfections- The Inside Quoins

Sean goes on more.. .   "The inside quoins were another matter.  At any point up the wall the batter is different, as it curves in or out the radius of the circle and hence the face changes, in addition the curve on the top and bottom of the stone would have different radii.  Basically no two quoins were going to be the same.   For it to work, I felt the key was to try and mark everything accurately as close to perfect as possible and then the inevitable  imperfections would not matter.  Several curbs (heritage dressed granite stone, salvaged from the streets of old San Francisco) were cut to give a stock of various thicknesses/lengths, to allow for a choice when fitting (and as they were much thinner than the outside quoins, for me to work out all the possible combinations to get to a level to match the outside for the throughs).  Whilst fairly regular, the kerbs were not machined, and so additional ones were also made to order later.  

With runners (ie set along the curve) the first step was to offer the quoin up and mark the inside edge so it could be cut to the correct angle allowing for the 2 ends of the face to be just outside the line of the curve for waste to be chiselled off.  Stretchers (running into the doorway) were easier as the long edge was just run along the inside face of the doorway/opening. The quoin was placed on the wall, the profile was placed against either end and the curved batter marked on the stone with a pencil.  The bottom edge was marked by running the pencil along the stone it was sitting on.  The curve along the top length was then marked by eye (ie approximated- the posh version of ‘guessed’) the important thing was that it didn’t scallop sharply or be too straight either - provided it was only slightly imperfect to the eye it would work.  I often drew a straight line joining the marks of the curved ends, and marked the centre of this, I could then see a lot easier if my freehand curve line was too asymmetric, since I could see the offset relative to the straight line.  

The inside end was far harder to mark than the exposed end with stones getting in the way of the frame, I’m not sure I can explain that fully or even remember why!  However I do remember the exposed end…

 

The key was to get the batter curve  very accurate at the exposed end.  In reality we realized from the outset that it was unlikely any face was going to be truly perfect with all the curves involved but the only really visible bit that would catch the eye was that exposed end.   I also felt it was important that one person…which happened to be me 😊 was responsible for all the marking, as to a degree, it needed a consistent approach and some of it was approximated - if one person was doing it, it was more likely that the imperfections would at least be reasonably consistent.   One thing we did not need was imperfect imperfections!  The net result was that I sometimes felt I was monopolizing the fitting, but on the flip side if I’d been chiselling we’d probably still be there now.  

Fabrication of these quoins prove heroic I think,  we had plenty of material. My exhortations were less plaintive just pointing out which was the crucial curved end.  <<Wish I could remember how mark described the stone - chiselling sugar or something>> Probably one in six went wrong and a corner blew or the stone cracked.  I had meant to make at least one quoin and I sometimes regret that I never got around to making even one of them, subliminally the distant curses probably had an effect."

Quoin Recollections

Sean Adcock goes on to explain about the quoins in the temple... 

"The outside quoins ( corner stones ) were relatively simple, in as much as anything was simple in this build.  There was a lovely group of sawn white granite lengths on site, which we requisitioned amongst some stiff competition ( wanted for some 'lesser' use it in a rival installation ) if I remember correctly. 

Whilst it was sawn and fairly regular the stones weren’t uniform. They were a variety of sizes varying  an inch or two between themselves, and some variation within, one or two were tapered.  So there was much measuring and checking to ensure we could get groups of 4, more or less the same, so that the doors would be just about symmetrical, not to mention finishing at the same height.  

It was going to be a shame to cut up the lengths, but it would give us a good start, and we thought, look very clean and precise.  As it turned out we could get enough. The least regular of the chunks could be adjusted (ground down) to make the final quoins, just below the springers, at around our envisaged height of 72” for both doors.  There was even enough to make 2 pairs of tie stones.  The major worry with these quoins was that there was not enough material for spares (or any mistakes?).  If I had miscalculated, if a chisel went astray, if a corner spalled ! 

 

The blocks were carefully cut square leaving an original cut edge for the inside of the door.  The face was then marked for a batter of 1:10  - millimetres again coming to the fore … if the stone was say 255mm tall then the offset at the top was 25.5mm more, the face was marked at 10mm at base an 35.5mm at the top on the two ends, the marks joined top side and bottom- joining the dots again – and handed over to John, Mark et Al to perform their chiselly magic, (which included dressing the outside faces of each stone)

I have always respected  their abilities with a hammer and chisel, something I have little experience of,  I am sure they got fed up with my “be careful”s, “don’t chip the corners” entreaties.  They tell me it was a friendly stone to work, whatever my views of them changed from respect to envy.  No room for error, and there was none, not even with my measuring (little did they realize what a novelty this is – the porch in my house has a very posh window which I originally measured for an upstairs bedroom, the porch ended up being built to fit the window that didn’t fit in the bedroom… enough said.

Interestingly the decision to have clean tight fitting quoins here dictated much of the build of these temple doors.The mica schist used in the walls had to be carefully chosen and often cut to fit buttes to the corners, so that it too was relatively tight, and then the voussoirs too needed to be as precise as the quoins in order to not look incongruous."

(The treatment of the third door opening in the temple was a bit different from the other two, and the story of that will be told  later.

The Internal Batter

The lean of the outer wall of our design would have the typical batter of a dry stone wall. However, for the batter of the inner wall of the hexagonal temple, we decided to create a gradual concave curve that would come to vertical above the point it started from at 8 feet, with a maximum offset/deflection  of 6 inches, something subtle so visitors wouldnt necessarily notice straight away, so as to  not be immediately obvious.

Sean thought the best approach was to make a ‘profile’ or ‘template’ which could be used at any height to check the batter curves evenly.

This profile would in effect be part an arc, that is part of the circumference of a larger circle. 

 

Sean writes, “ Given it was an arc, the height was in effect a chord (8 feet) and given the known offset (6 inches) I was able to calculate the radius of the imaginary circle our arc would be taken from.  Then taking the edge of a sheet of plywood as a tangent to the centre of our arc,  I was able to calculate the distance of the arc from the tangent, via trigonometry and very possibly witchcraft… I can’t actually remember exactly what I did, and I have lost my original diagram, with calculations on it, I did however at the time transfer the computed measurements to a notebook, in case the notes got lost/damaged and we needed a new profile…  

To make my life easier I had converted everything into centimetres and gone for offset of 15cm and length/height of 240 cm (whilst imperial measurements of 64ths of an inch are more accurate than millimetres but using a calculator and having decimals makes metric more user friendly  - you don’t need to recalculate 9.82(cm) into inches and sixty fourths). I marked the offsets on the ply, every 2cm I think , where the change was noticeable, every 4cm where the change was minimal (ie towards top the bottom) and literally joined the dots. I handed the plywood over to JSR to cut with a skill saw along the marked line, as I didn’t trust myself. A straight batten was then attached to the cut plywood, parallel to the straight edge, to strengthen it and give a flat edge against which a level could be placed.  

 

We had marked the centre of the floor to give scribe internal circle footprint and carefully ran the first course of interior stones, using a wire from the centre point. Then placing the profile against the base of the wall and ensuring it was vertical and the surface plane pointed towards the centre of the circle , and thus  theoretically give the correct position for a stone at any point in (and up) the wall.  

This was of course not entirely true as straight stones don’t sit exactly on a curve, as , in an inside curve, only the centre of the stone is on the correct line, so care had to be taken to remember this for the first few courses before a more uniform curve was in effect created against which the profile could be ‘rested’. Even then stones occasionally got in the way, the surface was full of imperfections.

 

It had been clear for some time that our build would go beyond the maximum height of the profile we were planning to use,  and an extension would be needed.  I can’t remember if JSR or I suggested exaggerating this last bit of curve before building up to the upper ‘rim’ , in order to emphasize the subtlety of the original curve, and to really start bringing the upper ridge more towards the centre, to create an overhang  above people’s heads.  It was one of those many things that we had apparently both been mulling over, so that when one of us suggested it the other said ‘yes I was thinking that…’  Anyway I came up with a curve I thought transitioned well, and wouldn’t be entirely lost with the thickness of stone we were working with.

Wet Dry Walling

 

Before we go into all the details of the temple's arch dimensions, the exterior batter and vertical elliptical interior walls, and all the niche arrangements, the types of stones we used and how they were measured and shaped, I think we should pause and just look at how wet dry stone walling can be. This was the rain of the not so rainy season that California sorely needed, but we didn’t.  It’s always a trade off. 

               

Walling is fun in the rain, sometimes. But when it involves really precision work and electric grinders and gas powered cut off saws , it can loose its appeal. The carefully drawn lines chalk lines and scribed coloured pencil marks on the stones all disappear in a dusty soupy mix. The grinder extension wires short out in the puddles. You are always losing your chisel in the mud. Your soggy tape measure jams up. The hand carts loaded with heavy cornerstones sink up to the axles. And of course everything is super slippery.

But we poured on , I mean powered on, hoping to see a rainbow.

And Lo...  On the third day we saw the light of the sun.