Fire pit and solar shower.

After the rather tiring chore of spreading the gravel, we had settled into a routine of small chores until we got some energy back. That mostly consisted of warfare against the ants and the cutting, splitting and organizing of the scrap wood left over from the construction.

A quick word about the ants. I had come here thinking I would need to deal with the red harvester ants since they were so prevalent, and caused Zuno so much pain last summer. As it turns out, the red ants haven't really been a problem. Jill did get bitten once and can attest to the pain of the bite, but for the most part they have not factored in. The tiny brown ants on the other hand have been a nuisance. We were hardly here a week when they had started to make inroads into the garage, the teardrop shed, and the pump house. It was in the pump house where I discovered they are quite destructive to wood. They are like tiny carpenter ants. Our plan to use the fairly earth friendly Equal sweetener did NOT work, so I finally went to full on toxic warfare. I used a combination of Terro ant bait and Ortho spray. As of this writing, I seem to have the ones that were invading my space under control.

The next two jobs on my list were building a fire pit and a larger solar shower.

The fire pit which we had out back at 14 Spring St in Maine is one of the few things that I miss about Maine. I decided I wanted something similar at Mariposa. I bought a few cinder blocks for the cooking section, and then hauled rock from the ridge behind the house for the circle. Since I took this photo, we have adorned the pit with a few pottery shards we found south of the house. I haven't used the pit yet, but I am looking forward to doing so when the days get shorter and the nights get colder.

Since we arrived a little over a month ago, we have been using a bag type solar shower which my folks gave to us. It works quite well, but we wanted something a little more permanent. I had purchased a black plastic 55 gallon drum a while back and installed a spigot.

Originally I was going to dig holes and set the 4x4 posts in Quickcrete, but it has been dry and the ground is as hard as a rock. The thought of trying to dig the post holes did not appeal to me. I decided to attach the shower structure to the pump house instead. Another trip to good old Home Depot in Gallup provided the lumber for the frame. I had built up the bed with some of the gravel road base, and set blocks for the 4x4 corner posts to rest on. We decided that a sit down shower would suffice, which saved some money on the lumber and made filling the barrel less of a hassle. The corner posts are 6 footers, so you CAN stand up in the shower, you just don't get much pressure.

Like the washing machine (Charlotte) we shall see how well it works.