Day 17, Monday, June 15, 2026: San Juan’s one inchers
Monday morning began with the crew somewhat dispersed. P and Y took care of some errands and did not get to the garden project until about after lunch. D and P2, however, were busy right from the get go. First, they went to Bylands to pick up our new trees that were awaiting a pick up.
Next, D and P2 went off to Vernon in order to acquire our supply of San Juan bluish slate one inch tumbled rocks that we had ordered a couple days ago. They came back home with a van full of 1.64 tonnes (1,640 kilos) of rocks as well as a few buckets of river stones and pea gravel. After replenishing themselves, D and P2 went around outside to start unloading the truck, which was going to be a massively manual effort given we did not have a fork lift available. P and Y joined them, as did E to help unload the massive rock pallet. We had the truck repositioned closer to where we could easily unload by forming a human chain.
After unloading, the crew dispersed again. P, D and Y reconvened around 5:30 pm to build out more of the rock base around the top waterfall. This involved a few more trips back to the rock quarry, some stoneboat runs and a lot of grunts to lift heavy rocks into the stack. Working conditions and terrain did not allow too many pictures of this. We ended the day with a tasty dinner again.
After dinner, the group ventured outside to run the waterfalls and stream again, as well as discussed ways that we could remedy the issue of a wide and low stream outlet on our upper pond. We will need to tackle this soon. We also overheard that E was promised that we’d have the upper pond rock stack ready to go with the right soil medium tomorrow, so we could start placing our new rock garden plants. Right around the same time, we got another update from our satellite volunteer team, K and T, who have been working on building the bridge for the stream. We have the handrails and joists almost ready to go and K will share with us some sample profiles tomorrow. The bridge will be amazing, and we can hardly wait to see it!
