WINDOWS AND RAIN

 

The studio door has been secured in place. I am so happy with the work of the talented blacksmith.

The windows were also finished yesterday. The glass is reflective from the outside, and the studio is looking better all the time.

43 mm of rain over the past couple of days has taken its toll, though. We have been unable to find workers to install the ceramic tile on the roof, and places of our interior walls in both buildings show the effects of heavy rain on unprotected adobe.

OURIKA ROCKS

This past week got off to an exciting start with the arrival of the team that came to install the stone cladding on the studio walls. The stone mason was an incredible craftsman and it was pure joy to watch him work. In the photo, you can see the progression of the tasks. First, a red chalkline is snapped to fix the correct height of the cladding. Next, thick boards are placed on top of rocks and rubble to fix the level bottom of the cladding and provide temporary support until the mortar has dried. Finally, a stone or two is mortared to the wall on both ends of the wall. A string is secured in front of-and touching-the anchor stones to keep the wall the same thickness. As the stones have a variety of thicknesses, this is challenging.

 

In the meantime, the quest for the right shade of mud continues.

And the winter rains have arrived. We have had 17 mm of 

precipitation over the past two weeks, and the immediate forecast is for rain. Fingers crossed it does not bypass the garden home!

MUD

While I am still trying to find the color I want for the building exteriors, I took the opportunity to play around with the mud mix. It consists of three pigments (yellow, red and black) white dirt and white cement. I tried it on solid red bricks, stones, wire mesh, and pieces of tajines. 
 

And just to make it fun, I added some pieces of the Essaouira tile shards I collected during the summer of 2024. The crew finished the walls inside the studio and they look good, although it remains to be seen how much the color will lighten when it has dried.

TILES AND STRAW

The branches of the olive trees are so loaded down with fruit that 

most of the branches are pointing straight down to the ground.

Tiles for the studio rooftop terrace. This is a traditional Moroccan design and I chose these tiles not because they were my favorite but because they will deflect some of that awful summer sun.

The jury is still out on the finished stucco color but one thing is sure, I am having the guys put a lot of straw in all of the future batches. There are too many cracks in the one on the left, and I love the texture of the mix with a lot of straw.

Only a few details to be cleaned up and the tataoui 

studio ceiling is finished!

 

THE COLOR OF MUD

Mixing the correct color for the mud stucco is proving to be challenging. When the first batch was mixed it looked perfect, but I knew the shade would lighten as it dried, and it dried way too light and a bit too yellow.  I asked the guys to try again, left for a while and when I next looked, the walls were a deep, brick red that I hated. Two days later it had lightened but it was still too red. I mixed up several batches myself, adding different amounts of yellow and black pigments to get the color I wanted, but now we have to wait for those sample patches to dry as well.

The window grates look perfect, I am so happy with them.

The highlight of today was finding that the studio door had been delivered. I think it is fantastic. Our talented blacksmith simplified my design without losing the Amazigh essence and I can't wait to see it installed.

As always, break time sitting underneath the shade of the loaded 

olive branches is a joy. Harvest time is quickly approaching.

OURIKA ROCKS AND MUD PLASTER

The variations in colors on these stone slabs are so beautiful.

In the foreground is the mud plaster before the red pigment was added.

Need a scaffold to apply the mud plaster? Do it Moroccan style-knock some holes in the border wall and some more in the mud brick wall, insert poles, nail together a ladder of scrap wood, throw some planks on top of the poles, and get to work.

I liked the hue of the mud plaster when it was wet, but knew it would dry a lighter shade. We had decided to do the back walls of the studio first, in case it ended up being too light. We will mix a darker batch for the front of the studio.

This was the second morning we woke up to snow in the High Atlas-the views from the rooftop terraces will be fabulous.

PROGRESS

 After our initial success growing potatoes last year, Kaoutar, Kareem and I built a potato tower a few weeks ago. Less than three weeks later, we have potatoes sprouting! Some of the slaoui gourd plants are dying now, but I harvested again today, and I think by the time we harvest olives, the plants will still be overtaking the tree.

After a frustrating 10 day period when we could not get the workers back, they finally reappeared today and began work on the mix of white dirt, straw, lime and a pigment that will be the "mud" that covers the walls, inside and out. Here, they came, dug through my spare wood pile and constructed this screen to sift the white dirt.

When all of the dry ingredients except the pigment were mixed in a big pile on the front porch, the guys formed a basin in the middle and started filling it with water. I learned that the "dough" had to have a rising time.

View of the great room from the east porch.The kitchen will be off to the left of the doorway in the background, a dining area near the wheelbarrow, then an office nook and living area in the foreground. The second half of the building is to the left and will also include storage and bathroom areas, and the bedroom.

TATOUI CEILINGS, STONES AND WINDOW GRATES

 

This past week, Kareem has been concentrating on building the bamboo panels for the tatoui ceilings. The blacksmith delivered most of the grates for the windows and they look great.

We also got the first load of the flat stone slabs we will use 

for the facade of the bottom meter of the walls around 

the perimeter of the house and studio.

The colors of the stone slabs are a mix of warm earth tones and gray, which tie in perfectly the mud walls and gray river rocks in the garden.

Chris and Lin and their driver picked me and came to the garden. 

It was nice to have friends out for a couple of hours. 

ROOFTOPS AND VIEWS TO THE MOUNTAINS

Overhead view of the studio.

The concrete trucks were scheduled to arrive at 5 pm on Saturday evening. They were only three hours late, which is typical for Morocco.

View from the roof of the house, looking over the property wall 

to the Atlas mountains to the south.

View to the east.

View to the southeast, with one of the zeitoun trees obscuring the bamboo palace.

 

AMAZIGH DESIGNS

The garden home is located in a rural area populated by Amazigh people, the indigenous people of the Mahgreb. I created a series of designs for the window and door grates, all based more or less abstractly on the proposed symbols of the Amazigh, the "free man" and "free woman" symbols. The steel artist took a look at this design for the studio door and suggested that it be simplified a little, and I agreed it was a good idea.

This design is for a few windows in the house.

The porches on both ends of the house now have roofs, and the comfort provided by these shelters on the east and west sides of the house should be substantial.

Geoff Lawton of the "Greening the Desert" project in Jordan claims that these ground-covering succulents (ice plants) provide a carpet of insulation for the soil, and it looks like we have a good start on that.

Kaoutar and I planted nine bags with three tree seeds in each today, and placed them in the temporary tree nursery on the north side of the bamboo palace.

CONCRETE ROOF AND GARDEN

The roofs of both buildings are concrete, something I have never seen before in a home. I am looking forward to getting comfortable with it.

 

 

Looking from the west porch to the studio.

Assembling the pulley that will bring buckets of concrete up to the roofers.

These steel reinforced concrete  planks go up first, then concrete blocks are spaced in between and finally, more fresh concrete is poured on top.

Concrete being moved up to the top, bucket by bucket.

Manuela stripping leaves fron zeitoun branches. The leaves will be used as fertiler/mulch in the garden beds and the twigs and branches will form the hugel pathways.

Egg case of a praying mantis.

With so much of the ground used by the construction process, we stole a small space next to the toilet for a new garden bed.