A large blue spaceship has landed in the front garden. It is the kit for our new house - all the posts and beams and roofing materials which is hunkered down under a garish blue tarpaulin against the unseasonal rains we've been enjoying the last few weeks. It will probably stay in its makeshift tent for another month or so - until the weather dries up and the builders finish their extended festivities over Christmas and New Year.

The day the kit arrived saw P and me hauling bricks around to make room. In fact we calculated P did 400 squats holding two bricks at a time (he turned into a hobbling, grunting monster for the rest of the weekend). I had it easy as I only had to pick up the bricks and push them down the PVC pipe we'd set up to move the bricks from A to B. We'd been trying to contact the builder all morning but to no avail - he was apparently (and very conveniently) out of range, even though he was a mere two suburbs away. Finally I told P to ring the builder's father and dob on him - he is still part of the business, but semi-retired due to eye trouble. He said he'd come over as fast as he could. Later we found out that the builder-son had decided to take off to Brisbane for a business freebie that day!

The interstate semi-trailer with the kit arrived just before the builder came, so P and my father had to direct traffic on our busy street while the over size truck manouvered itself into our battleaxe driveway. They waved bits of cardboard around and prayed that the cars would stop. Luckily there were no road rage incidents over this sudden and most spontaneous traffic jam. As soon as the semi trailer made it down the driveway (amazingly, no scrapes!) my dad jumped on the back and started hooking up the loads on the crane like a pro. He got a real kick out of this he told us later. In fact we got a shot of him doing a sort of victory salute (think boxing champion) when the crane lifted a particularly heavy load - you might be able to see him in the photo here...

Every time I walk past the kit pile I take a deep breath in - the smell of the cypress pine posts is just lovely - and they're not as square as I thought they'd be - they are actually quite wavery in places and have lots of interesting knots sprinkled over them. We'll be sealing them with a natural oil, but hopefully the nice woodsy smell will stay around...

I didn't tell you about another near disaster we averted by dint of being on the spot when it matters - we were able to measure all the holes the concrete guys dug for the piers that support the slab. Just as well - because when the invoice came through they wanted to charge us double the price. It is very rare for anyone to double check these holes and so the concretors usually get away with it. Luckily we were on the ball and our builder backed us up - he told us he was sick of dealing with shady cement men.

So we're still waiting for the rain to stop and it is now the middle of January. Sigh... oh well, its good to have the rain for the garden and I guess... Speaking of gardens we've purchased our first lot of greenery for our property - a handful of potted lilly pillies and lemon myrtle (another beautiful scent). We visited Parklea markets and grabbed ourselves a bargain in S's trailer and hauled the load home on the hottest day you can imagine. We've now plonked the pots along the western fence to appease our neighbour who told P we'd completely ruined her outlook. These plants will fill in the gaps along the boundary and eventually create a great screen and shade for our house - not to mention some lovely jams!

The last two months have been a roller coaster ride. Building has started, but it has been stop and go... The first few weeks were a flurry of activity - with the first excavations done and the slab poured in under two weeks. Suddenly it was imperative that we choose all our bathroom items - the plumbing would all be laid in under the slab. We did it all on one Saturday morning at the local Reece outlet. My head was fairly reeling after we let and I suffered a few pangs of anxiety - did we choose the right taps...?

One of the concrete team was an old Italian guy who took P aside one day to show him our small patch of heritage vegetables braving the earthworks in their own little gully. There was an Italian broccoli and several spinach plants that we hadn't even noticed! We've since transplanted them to pots near S's house. It's great to think we can carry the seeds of previous gardeners through to our new garden one day. We also pulled the olive tree from under a wreck of branches and have placed it in a large pot - not sure if it will survive the shock however...

Then the deluge started... and stayed... In the last two weeks we've had 1.5 working days of fine weather - so the digger man came and started on the next stage of excavations which will give us the different levels of the garden and allow foundations for retaining walls. As we are on a slope, there are quite a few of these walls needed. The large mud pie that now surrounds the slab is starting to make sense and give us an idea of the final lay of the land. Dad has been great in the department of moral support and under-foreman. He came around to back me up in talking to the digger man and sorting out the good soil from the bad. Because of the debris from the driveway works we have a heap of clay sitting on top of good topsoil. I did a fair bit of digging by hand last Thursday in the sweltering midday heat to try and move an inaccessible pile of clay into the path of the bobcat. I might try and save some of the clay to make into a bowl for the new house. It is sometimes white streaked with red, sometimes more of an ochre in colour.

We've realised how important it is to be around while the building is happening - we have averted a few disasters already in this way. The first major one was that the concrete guys marked out the front door in the wrong spot - it turns out they were going by an old version of the house plans!

So P is taking this Friday off to take delivery of our kit from Victoria (that is if the truck can get close enough to the slab - with the mudbath down the back this is not a certain thing). This will be the posts and beams that are the structural skeleton of the house. Our house will be built in a topsy turvy way - the roof will go up before the walls. This can only happen because the walls are not load bearing - the wooden posts (250 mm wide) will do this job.