Okay, Pasadena isn’t all that urban, but I did wonder what the CA Viehls would think of our farm. Larry and I got there first yesterday, and suddenly the lower meadow/pasture looked dried out, weedy. The sun was too hot, a couple of turkey vultures circled, the blackberries were angry with thorns. You’ll note the change from the introductory photo at the top of this blog. No longer exactly your green, lush, countryside.

“Just exactly how big is a hundred acres?” Charlie asked as we hiked past the first row of hawthorne, into the second section before the hill.
“Put it this way,” Charlie, “Andrew said. “A football field is 1.3 acres.” This interesting bit of info (where did that come from, Andrew?) stopped us in our tracks.
“Including the stadium?” from Charlie.
“No, just the field.”

“Well, the swimming pool could go here, anyway” Charlie said, making lemonade from this lemon — a weedy patch of ninety-some football fields.
“It’s pretty far from the house,” I told him.
“Okay then, we’ll build a zip line. That’ll be very cool, because we can just let go over the water and it’ll be so great.”
While Charlie was dreaming of the improvements that could be made to this raw hundred acres, Andrew had his camera out and was recording the “before” shots. All of the photos on this post are his, and here’s another: (Be sure to click on the images to enlarge them!)

The above photo is from the building site, but the air was hazy with dust from all the harvesting round about, and you can’t see what is really there. Rolling hills, agricultural land under plow, and the coast range foothills to the west. I sound as if I’m trying to sell you something, and I think I am. I hope you like this place as much as I do!

Into the woods. Much cooler, in the old-fashioned sense of temperature. These are the oaks growing on the slope, which should be thinned by 60%, according to USF&W.

We descended into the eastern woodsy landscape by the creek. And I made the mistake of mentioning poison oak. Well, there is a little, and one sure doesn’t want to touch the stuff, but it does not, contrary to the alarms of my Pasadenans, jump out and twine about your legs. What with this concern, and the disappointment of the creek, Muddy Creek, let’s recall, I feared I’d lost them.

I should mention Amy here. Wonderful girl, fits between her two brothers like cool water between a tsunami (Charlie) and a deep, underground cavern (Andrew). She’s quite practical, and if there’s poison oak, she’ll simply step around it.

But Charlie is irrepressible and moves on. We should build a running track, so that he can train for the Olympics. That will be after he orbits the earth in his home-made satellite created from used M & M wrappers. And a climbing wall, adjacent to the swimming pool will be nice. He has turned his back on the creek, thank you, and will find relief and comfort in the tiled, blue waters of a California-style, ordinary, everyday swimming pool, with its adjacent in-ground Jacuzzi.

So we can see that we have quite a lot of work to do: dig a well, create a road, build a house, satisfy the aims of conservation we had in mind in addition to raising another Disneyland.

But I’m saving the best for the last. Finally, the county has responded and YES, we are approved to build a house on the site we’d selected. Now the work, the real work, not the fantasies will begin. On Monday we’ll contact a well digger. And continue to keep our fingers crossed that he/she will find water under our hillside.

Photo creds to Andrew Viehl for the gorgeous scenes. Thanks!