On Tuesday Mike Slobogean drove up from White Rock and the next morning we were initiating him to filling tires. He just left this afternoon and with his help we completed row #6. Peter Robinson of Westbank arrived last night and today we gave a crash course in earthships, as he is leaving us tomorrow morning sometime.

My cousin Gerald and his partner/wife/ and one of their sons, Arlo, arrived this evening just in time to help out, too. We are almost finished the first “U” of the seventh round.

My cousin Trevor (he is actually my cousin Alan’s son and Gerald’s nephew; I’ll let you sort it out) showed up to get his hands dirty too. So we had a fairly sizeable crew for a few hours this evening.

Our photos are fairly repetitive right now. Tires, dirt, more tires, more dirt.

Unfortunately I did not have my camera with me when I headed down to our pharmacy to pick up more cardboard a few days ago. My friend Shelly had shown me where the store stacks its cardboard outside and I had been picking it up as needed. This time when I went there was a raised cage that cardboard was being stored in. It had a slot at the top and it was locked. Rather than wait for the store to open to ask them to unlock it, I went to the hardware store to see if they had any cardboard.

The hardware store also had one of these wooden cages and when I asked if they could unlock it and let me take the contents I was told that the cages were part of the town’s new cardboard collection program. Hmmm. I drove quickly around town and discovered that while we were shooting the rapids in Bowron, Barriere was locking up its garbage!!!

I quickly phoned Chris for ideas as we were desperate for that cardboard.

He had talked to the folks at the dump and had been told we could go through their huge bins whenever we wanted. All the cardboard in these cages ends up there eventually anyway.

So up to the dump where Alan cranked open the great big green bin and voila!!! My PICK of corrugated cardboard. I was so excited I fell over my own feet and knocked my shin against the bin, leaving me with a whopper of a bruise. To match the one Mike gave me when he shoveled a rock onto my hand!

We will be working away on round #7 with an eye to completing it before Tuesday…wish us luck!

On Tuesday I will be shopping for a new camera as ours died and the kids are pretty protective of their own digital cameras!