Siwan and the Nymphs; or: We have a sewage treatment plant

We went to the Wood today; and Livy took lots of photographs which will be here soon. The moraine forming the road has solidified beautifully and seems to be taking construction plant with little difficulty. It was also resisting a very determined and heavy West Highland downpour.

The house site has also hardened, and the foundations have been filled in with concrete. There are drain holes; there are electricity cables, which seem to have been laid underground to the foot of the nearest electricity post; there is a sewage treatment tank with a natty domed green lid right in the foreground of the view from the side window in the sitting room; there is a track of extremely deep mud leading away from the sewage tank to the west burn, where the clean water discharge pipe comes out; there is a lot more peaty mud heaped in terraces behind the house; there is what may be the track of a buried telephone cable; there is a sort of grotto to the east of the house which is where we understand the water drilling may be taking place in due course, in which case it is most definitely the nymphaeum.

The house looks both rather big and quite small, depending on where one is looking at it from. We haven't walked into it, of course. It sits very neatly into the land, and the steps down to the sitting room seem to make sense. The views will be pretty good - better than from the earlier site.

I am now beginning to plan how to turn the acres of waterlogged peat heaps into a landscape again. At present, great areas of it simply cannot be walked on because one just sinks into it, when there is no mat of vegetation to hold one up.