The grass over my head IV

Plumbing is one of the least exciting aspects of a house at the best of times. When your house only has an eight square metre bathroom and one sink, it’s hardly worth mentioning.  

So all that remains is the roof.

          A house’s weakest point is usually its roof. Not mine. Once I had the grass established, it would weigh anything up to three tonnes when saturated. Not even a Sumo-wind was going to be able to toss that. But, of course, at the moment my roof weighed ... nothing. Well, almost nothing, consisting as it did of a single sheet of rubber. Until I had the sods up there, I was going to remain worried ... even with insurance.

          But what was the best way of sodding a roof?

          Some people recommended buying soil and planting seeds. Carrying soil would be reasonably straightforward, but it had the decided disadvantage that it would again be at the whim of the weather. One good downpour before the new grass had established itself, and I could have a lovely green moat encircling my house.

          Others recommended buying ready-made turf strips. Although this would make for a quick job, it was an expensive option. There was also the question of whether normal turf would survive the harsh Central weather. Besides, I wanted my roof to blend in, and a rooftop bowling green simply didn’t seem like the right option.

           No other ideas were forthcoming. Though someone did suggest I simply retain an unembellished butynol roof. This idea was immediately rejected on the basis it was not only a strangely kinky concept, but was also no longer feasible since I’d only glued the edges, and the thought of an eternally flapping roof certainly didn’t inspire me.

          The best solution was also the most obvious one. Dig my own sods from somewhere close to the house, and carry them onto the roof. It would be hard physical labour. All-in-all 10 cubic metres of sods would need to be moved from their current location on the ground -where, in a ‘normal’ building-inspector kind of world, they would forever remain - onto a steeply-sloping roof six metres high at its peak. But local sods were not only guaranteed to blend in, but to thrive in the conditions.    

So I found a relatively flat (and apparently rock-free) expanse of grass behind the house (carrying stuff down is always easier than carrying stuff up), marked off 100 square metres, then gave it a crew-cut with, I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit, a pair of scissors.

Once complete, I stood in the centre of my property’s first, and probably last, clipped lawn and contemplated the task ahead. Ten Cubic Metres of sods. It was enough for a tennis court or three cricket pitches. Ten Cubic Metres of sods raised to my roof. Raising the Titanic would be a cake-walk in comparison. Sodding my roof would be a feat of engineering equalling that of the Pharaohs building the Grass Pyramids of Cheops. They at least had gangs of slaves ...

          Slaves ...

          What I needed was my own chain gang of sod-raising slaves!

          Unfortunately, private slavery had been outlawed, and the purveyors of public slavery were unwilling to assist. The Department of Conservation failed to see the ecological merits of my grass roof, while the Department of Corrections couldn’t fail to see the security de-merits of my property. The Department of Commerce claimed slavery was none of their business. While the Department of Social Welfare claimed slavery no longer existed, though they’d be happy to send me a copy of their Compulsory Unpaid Labour Discussion Paper. The Department of Maori Affairs wanted to know if I was using their land. While the Department of State Owned Enterprises tried to sell me some of their land, along with two power stations, TVNZ, Mount Ruapehu and the National Archives. And, lastly, the Department of the Interior, citing demarcation issues, claimed they could only sod inside my house, otherwise they’d risk upsetting the Department of the Exterior.

          So, no slaves. Abraham Lincoln has a lot to answer for. I’m sure if he’d been a New Zealander, he’d have been a North Islander. But I did have friends. And what good are friends if they can’t occasionally be used for hard manual labour with no other reward than the sheer satisfaction of knowing they’d helped out a friend in desperate need?

It would be just like the “good old days” when everyone clubbed together to build each other’s house. Just like the Amish or the Seventh Day Adventists (whom I’d once witnessed converting a disused section into a church, complete with landscaping, in a single weekend). Though our efforts would more likely resemble the Seven Dwarfs, and our song probably wouldn’t so much be “hi-ho, hi-ho” as “oh-no, oh-no”.

          The call went out. Get out your gumboots, and BYO shovel for the mother of all dirty weekends.  (Don’t you just hate people who say things like that? But instead of raising hell, Cain or even hats, we’d be raising sods ... and a few glasses when it was all over.

          Saturday morning was fine and warm ... hot, in fact, and as the sun sizzled away the morning mist, the first willing workers started arriving, armed with shovels and enthusiasm aplenty. By mid-morning we’d attained our full complement of ten, and after some initial discussion about the optimum approach, we began the excavations. Based on my own complex formula (otherwise known as guesswork), I estimated the roof should be completely grassed over by the end of the day ... all going well.

          Everything did go well. We quickly established co-operative combinations according to personal preferences and strengths, with a natural, efficient routine slowly emerging from the chaos. Ideally, we could have simply divided into rotating teams of diggers, bearers and stackers, maintaining the momentum throughout the day. But there were other considerations. For one, it was my roof, so I was anxious to oversee the most crucial part of the process - placing the sods, packing them together and filling any gaps with loose soil to maintain moisture and allow the sods to eventually knit together to form a single carpet of grass. For another, the distance from the excavation to our starting point along the front gutter required all ten of us in the chain, so the digging had to be alternated with spurts of carrying and stacking.

          We hadn’t reckoned on the toll such heat, combined with the heat-reflective capacities of the black butynol underfoot, would exact. Without frequent, spontaneous breaks for liquid refreshments and Minzion refresh-ment, we simply would have perished. Each hour would find us all sitting naked in the creek like living sponges soaking up the coolness.

Having no neighbours has many advantages, not least of which is we can freely skinny-dip in the creek, or lie on the rocks like fur-less sunbathing seals. Actually, there’s nothing stopping me from being a full-time nudist here except the weather and my personal predilections. But I have no desire to extend the realm of my pagan nakedness, or to invite nudity into my house ... and especially not my kitchen. So, although I don’t believe in restricting such natural pursuits to the confines of naturist retreats, I’m not about to join a Sunseekers Club because I just don’t want to sit where other naked people have sat, or to eat lunch opposite someone drooping chest hairs in his soup.

          So, despite our best endeavours, the encroaching evening found us all exhausted and dirty, but with only the front half completed. As we relaxed in the creek, letting sore muscles unwind and the heat dissipate from our naked bodies, the sense of anti-climax was almost palpable. Despite being extremely grateful for their charitable efforts, I couldn’t hide my vague sense of disappointment. Was that all we were capable of - a miserable half a roof? My mood was further undermined by a sudden grim revelation - it had taken 10 people an entire day to do one side, so how long would it take for me to finish the other half - alone.

          Yet, just as I’d under-estimated the amount of work involved, I soon discovered I’d also under-estimated the commitment of my friends to finish the job. Where I had assumed a day’s work was a sufficient price to ask, everyone else had assumed they were there for the duration (or at least the rest of weekend). Tomorrow we would finish the job. Together. Though I was jubilant, half-heartedly trying to prod our lazy companionship into party mode, exhaustion quickly claimed us all and a warm silence descended over my half-grassed crowded house.

          Sunday arrived, fresh and new. We were all weary, tired, but optimistic. Today we were an experienced sodding team. Today we would finish. Because we were now doing the closer side, there was suddenly enough of us to maintain a constant flow of sods throughout the day. With three people digging, five carrying and two stacking, the sod-level progressed perceptibly faster, racing the shadows towards the apex as the sun slipped across the sky.

Despite the continuing heat and extended sodden pauses, the sudden rocky ground and broken shovels, the army of sods marched onwards. Until, finally, the last sod was levered from the ground, lifted, passing through nine grimy pairs of Sherpa hands as it scaled the lawn Everest, reaching the summit as the exhausted sun sank beneath golden poplar sheets. And as we gathered at the apex, it was wedged into place with a final, whooping flourish.

          I would have ended the day there, contentedly exhausted, but the sod-raisers had other plans. The job was, they insisted, still unfinished. There were gutters to complete, gutters which would probably take an entire day alone, but only a few minutes together. It was no use arguing, so we unrolled the coil of Novaflow pipe (ridged plastic pipe with drainage holes), laid it out in the gutters and with a conveyor belt of buckets, covered it with local river gravel.

          I had a grass roof!

          We adjourned to the weir and sat in the water drinking champagne as the day’s heat gently dissipated.

          I had a grass roof!

          I was bubbling with elation and gratitude. And as I looked at the flotilla of beaming faces bobbing in the narrow lakelet, I realised the relationship between us had subtly altered during this weekend. We had undertaken a project together which, in everyday terms, had been a monumentous endeavour, and we had succeeded. We had shared each other’s lives for two days and been drawn closer, enrichened by the experience. The faces looking at me now were the faces of friends.

          As night descended on my grass roof for the first time, I lay in the darkness thinking about my house, my life. When I began this journey a lifetime ago, both were barely-imagined ideas, rough outlines filled with nothing but the potentialities of what each might become. Each step, each nail, each board, each moment, each thought, each adding to the whole, building on the past, building towards the future. Both had withstood the winds of change and the winters of discontent. Both were now much stronger for their passing.

          And I thought about Marion. When she’d left, I’d believed she’d taken all purpose with her. Taken meaning itself. But eventually I’d realised she had only taken her purpose, her meaning, because destinies can’t be coupled together to run on a single rail. The US juggernaut had been derailed, but that wasn’t the end of the line, simply the beginning of two separate, private journeys, on different tracks and travelling under our own steam.

          In the end, the different paths we’d chosen had merely been detours, because here we lay, together again, side-by-side. But now we were individuals with individual aspirations, separate lives. Lives we treasured. Lives of our own making. We were travelling on parallel paths, and could, if we chose, accompany each other on the next stage of the journey. All we had to do was hold out our hands.

Land Escaping III

          Although I had a workbench capable of all manner of extravagant tooling (and a router which was yet to be unpacked), I decided to simplify everything down to the basics. This also fit well with my preferred joinery style, which could best be described as “structural obviism” - which abandons traditional joinery techniques in favour of simply hammering or screwing things together. Who needs dovetails, dowels and precision cutting when a couple of nails is just as effective?

Yet, even adopting a primitive, pre-carpentric style didn’t mean making the door/window frames was entirely easy. There was still notches to be cut and grooves to be etched into the dry timber. Actually, I did eventually try to use my router for the groove, but all the heads from my ‘all-purpose multi-head router bits’ set I’d received free with the router seemed to have both a timber allergy and a violent anti- people streak. So I decided to use my trusty powersaw instead.

           Of course, once I’d completed the door frames, they didn’t just slide gently into place. Because although the door frames were reasonably square, the space they were meant to occupy wasn’t. So each frame had to be bullied and pushed and cajoled into place, then screwed into the surrounding framing.

I’ll never understand why screws are made more durable than screwdrivers, especially those of the Phillips head variety. I don’t know how many Phillips headless screwdrivers I now have cluttering my workshop. Either it’s a capitalist toolmakers conspiracy, or I’m making my holes one size too small.

          Once the frames were in, the doors themselves could be hung. Hanging doors is not so much an artform as a matter of trial and error. It might take a few attempts before it opens and closes smoothly, but it will happen ... eventually. Unfortunately, I didn’t consider closing mechanisms before I’d started, so there was some difficulty in finding latches which suited. Because both my doors opened inwards to the left, while all the available latches were designed for doors opening outwards to the right.

In the end, I had to turn the latches upside-down. Which has little impact on the door itself, but the key is now above the handle, and locking/unlocking operates in reverse. A small inconvenience for the joy of having doors opening the way you want them to open!

          In the meantime I was beginning to believe I'd never get my roof finished. I needed two fine days to dry out the pplywood, and two more days to glue the butynol. Five fine days all up. Surely we’d soon be in for a dry spell ...

          Twice in the next few weeks there was almost a false start. As soon as there were two dry days in a row, I’d prepare everything for an early morning start. But both times I woke to the familiar window of grey, so rolled over and went back to sleep. There’d be another time ...

          A week later there was a good, dry day. Then another.

          That afternoon I finished work early in order to get everything prepared, just in case. Two more days ...

          Later that afternoon my neighbour came across to pass on an urgent message from the hardware store. Don’t butynol roof, phone asap. I immediately cycled to the shop and called. The salesman was relieved to hear I hadn’t yet glued the butynol, because during a chat with the manufacturer he’d casually mentioned I was planning a grass roof. The stunned manufacturer had informed him that butynol wasn’t supposed to be used under grass rooves unless the seams were first vulcanised. If they weren’t, the root system would penetrate the glue and simply push the seams apart, causing a serious leaking problem.

The salesman would pick up the butynol rolls the next day, return them to the manufacturer, and they would vulcanise the seams, thereby creating a single, seamless sheet, free of charge.

          All the salesman’s information was second-hand, so I decided to talk to the manufacturer directly. The manufacturers had had experience with grass rooves. They were shocked that the hardware store had supplied their product without checking their specifications. We discussed various examples they’d dealt with (mostly near Nelson). It’s always a pleasant change to deal with someone who is not only experienced, but interested, so our conversation had the effect of dispelling some of my initial frustrations at being again delayed.

          As promised, the butynol sheet arrived a week later - all 60 kilograms of it. It was a huge, unwieldy lump, so I had to wait until John and Allan were available to help me get it onto the roof. The roof was, by now, damp again, but once we’d figured out which direction the sheet sat, and carefully unfolded it, it created a huge tarpaulin covering the entire roof. Of course. If I could just keep it in place for a few days, my entire roof would dry out regardless of how bad the weather remained.

          Which was a good theory. But if building paper became a spinnaker in the wind, a 100 square metre sheet of waterproof, windproof butynol was a mainsail. Naturally, a few calm days were outside the realm of possibilities. Even windy days seemed like too much to hope for under the circumstances. But surely the suddenly violent southerlies which swooped down to kidnap my butynol were uncalled for? There was little I could do but grit my teeth and endure the flapping, flopping struggle unfolding (and folding) on the roof. A few times I tried to intervene, dragging up hefty beams and untold metres of timber to anchor my butynol balloon, but the wind unleashed its fury anew and tossed my feeble efforts aside.

          As soon as the wind stopped, the rain would start. It was a conspiracy! The wind flipping back the butynol during the night to allow the rain to soak the plywood again.

Once this occurred while I was awake, so I was able to climb onto the roof and rearrange the crumpled butynol in time to prevent further wetness. But normally the transfer of power occurred in the night’s most secret moments. I berated the weather and God and Penelope (as long as weather presenters pretend to understand the weather, they’ve got to take some of the flack!) for their lack of compassion. Conveniently ignoring the fact that the weather had been my saviour a few weeks earlier, maintaining a protective veil of mist over my house until the hardware cavalry had finally ridden into town, saving me thousands of dollars and a lifetime of leaks and lifted seams. But who could be thankful at a time like this?

          The front was soon glued. Having a single sheet meant I only had to glue the edges rather than the entire area. With my rubber tarpaulin sheltering my roof helped dry out the rest. Apart from the back edge, which remained stubbornly damp.

With three sides securely glued, I thought it was a good opportunity to go to Dunedin for a few days and visit friends. But the next day a call from a local farmer informed me my roof had been “shredded” and was hanging limply over the side of the house. Panic-stricken and expecting the worst, I returned to find the butynol hadn’t been shredded, but the wind had peeled one edge away so that the entire back was blown over the side. The farmer had seen the ragged end draped over the edge from the road, and had assumed it had been torn. I breathed a sigh of relief, but became even more determined to finish the gluing as soon as possible.

          There were another few winds. Even with the edges glued, the wind wasn’t deterred, sucking the sheet high into the air, stretching and expanding it until it looked like a dirigible trying to lift off. No amount of timber would anchor it, but I continued this futile process simply out of fear that without some discouragement, the roof would peel off and sail into the creek. It never happened, but many nights I lay awake listening to loud music with the wind pounding time against the ceiling. Twice I rode the magic flying rubber carpet in the darkness as I struggled to increase the roof’s burden of timber. There were another few wettings, too. But the day finally arrived when I could glue the remaining edge, and confidently state I now had a waterproof house.

          David returned from his expedition overwhelmed by the audacity of the undertaking he was proposing. Establishing an Environment Centre in Dunedin was, he believed, a worthy and worthwhile project. But now that he’d investigated further, it also seemed such a monumentous task, fraught with obstacles, that he was no longer as confident of his ability to succeed by himself as he had been when it was still just an idea.

We discussed his proposal in detail, considering its benefits and its burdens for himself, for Dunedin, and for the green cause. Our strategies for overcoming obstacles and local inertia were diametrically opposed. David believed in intricately plotting every move beforehand to anticipate difficulties, while I believed in simply pushing ahead one step at a time ... as usual, David wanted to play chess, while I preferred checkers. But our thoughts about the Centre’s broader goals and philosophy converged at nearly every point. Suddenly it seemed he was embarking upon a Holy Quest to rid the world of ignorance. The Environment Centre would be the rallying point for the forces of goodness, the staging post from which the final assault on the world’s problems would be launched.

          At that moment, as we basked in the warmth of our momentarily shared semi-religious fervour, David asked whether I’d be interested in joining him on his great Crusade. I accepted.

          We should have known better ...

          Why did I accept? Establishing an Environment Centre had never been anything I’d imagined doing. I’d never even heard of such a thing until David came along. The thought of working in any public place full-time has never appealed. But the thought of doing something positive, of playing a small role in changing the world, even if the world was limited to Dunedin, of becoming an active member of a community after so many years of isolation, was an offer too tempting to refuse. Besides, my level of frustration with the world had reached saturation point - I either had to do something to change it, or stop complaining about it.

          That’s the community-minded, positive, charitable version, and I’d like to believe such sentiments were my prime motivation for making the decision to go to Dunedin and devote my immediate future to such a noble cause. But the waters of truth are always murky. So I can’t claim such purity of purpose.

Later, after the project had baulked at the starting gates, after it had stumbled and fallen at every hurdle, after David had torn up his betting slips and left the track, after it appeared permanently hobbled, destined only for the glue factory, only then was I truly gripped by an evangelical zeal. Only then, as I sat alone astride the lame creature, did I become determined to nurse it back to health. Only then, did I truly believe the project had to gallop again, that it had to win, not just for me, but for everybody ...

          But, at the time, I wasn’t so much going to Dunedin, as leaving Millers Flat. Leaving my house. The truth is I didn’t really care what the reason was, as long as it was reasonable. As long as I could persuade myself that it was worth leaving for, that I wasn’t just abandoning my life or fleeing from myself. I couldn’t have asked for a better reason to leave than to start an Environment Centre, because it seemed like such a positive thing to do. Such a positive excuse.

          So, despite my reservations about leaving the house in an unlockable state (with only a thin sheet of plastic between the world and all my worldly goods), I packed a bag of essentials and moved to Dunedin.

Chapter Seven - Land Escaping

Sometimes life seems like a cosmic game of craps where the dice are loaded and we’re chained to the table until all our chips are cashed. And it would be a comfort, sometimes, to believe it was only unfair because ‘someone’ was causing it to be unfair. To believe other players were involved in a conspiracy to prevent you from winning.

I’ve never been able to take conspiracy theories too seriously or too personally. I’ve always found it hard to believe anyone could win very much by making me lose, because life doesn’t seem to be a game where anyone really wins or loses, and we all break even in the end. Besides, any conspiracy which generates theories doesn’t seem to be a conspiracy to be too concerned about anyway ... though that could be exactly what ‘they’ want me to believe.

So I’m a sceptic. In fact, I’m even sceptical about being a sceptic. I never know whether I should rejoice in my scepticism and join a Sceptic Tank, or denounce scepticism and join a church, since faith is an anti-sceptic for the soul. But I’m more of an old-fashioned Sceptic with a capital ‘S’, because I don’t so much disbelieve, as refuse to believe on the basis that most things are unprovable, and it doesn’t bother me either way anyway.

I’ve never seen a ghost or had a spiritual experience, so I might doubt, but I don’t deny the possibility of their existence. I’ve never seen anything vaguely reminiscent of a UFO, and will likely never meet an alien, but I still have a soft spot for their notional existence. (Though filmed footage of such purported encounters always leaves me despairing of human gullibility. Why does it seem so easy to believe in the existence of an entirely alien culture, but not alien air traffic regulations?) But the concept of alien abductions troubles me. Not because it could be happening, but because of the aliens’ choice of abductees. Like the factory worker from Auckland who claims he’s been abducted every night for several years, no matter where he is, and without his wife, sleeping beside him, noticing. Could he possibly be that interesting, physically or intellectually, that anyone would want to spend every night with him? Maybe if he was Stephen Hawking or Arnold Schwarzenegger even, it might make some sense. The thought of aliens travelling light years just to abduct a factory worker from Auckland, simply fills me with unease. That’s just not the kind of aliens I want to believe in.

Yet that doesn’t make it not true. Maybe we all look alike to them, and maybe there’s nothing any of us could say that would be of any interest to them. After all, do vivisectionists converse with their victims? Still, you have to wonder at the rationale for abducting humans then letting them go on national TV to talk about it. Either it’s supposed to be a secret, or it’s not. So are they just space hoons playing practical jokes, or did they buy their memory erasers from some cosmic Warehouse?

Yet there are moments when the thought of being abducted by aliens and taken to some faraway planet does have an appeal ... even if just to have some memories erased. (Assuming, of course, that they’re an advanced species in every way, so the worst I could expect would be to end my days being gawped at in a comfortably humane zoo, and not on some slave planet shovelling nuclear waste.) Now, after six months of building, half a year of splinters, bruises, cuts and throbbing thumbs, endless muscle-weary days and infinite world-weary nights, was one of those moments.

For a fleeting, ecstatic moment I’d believed I had glimpsed the end shimmering on the horizon. Then the scorching rays of loss and futility flared anew, blistering my tender soul, and my momentary elation evaporated like a mirage. Suddenly it seemed a lifetime had passed since drought had first begun to ravage these fertile plains, transforming them almost overnight into a barren wasteland parched by the hostile sun, and Marion had abandoned me to my foolish fate. Why had I pushed stubbornly on, crawling across the emptiness until I’d gone too far to return, until I no longer had the energy to continue? And now, now that the last financial well had dried up, now that the vultures of loneliness and despair circled overhead, now that I could feel winter’s cold breath against my neck, only now did I understand that I could never reach the end. Not alone. Because finishing the house wasn’t the end, it was just the beginning.

I had been a King Midas, turning everything I touched, everything I owned, everything, not into gold, but into a house. I’d thought it would make me rich. Only now did I realise that as long as there was no life to fill it, the house could only make me poor. So desperately poor.

At that moment, being abducted by aliens would have been a blessed relief. But there were no aliens in the clear Central Otago sky (though, reportedly, just over the hill towards Tapanui is a major UFO convention centre), so any decision to be made was in my hands. I knew I couldn’t stay, but I also knew I couldn’t leave until the roof and floor were completed. And where would I go? This was my home, the only place I belonged. But I knew I had to leave, and I couldn’t return until I again discovered a reason to return, until I had a life to bring back.

June was slowly unravelling and the days were rapidly shortening. Most days were generally fine and sunny, making work bearable, if not entirely pleasant, but the nightly frosts were beginning to make shed-life uncomfortable, particularly in the mornings when the small gas heater struggled to thaw our breaths, and our numb fingers impotently fondled the icy tools. The temperature of the creek had also crossed the threshold from ‘bracing’ to ‘mind-numbing’ (not to mention what it did to all your other parts), so bathing was reduced to a minimum.

It was a simple, hermitic existence in our galvanised igloo, though occasionally we’d escape the evening cold by cycling to the village to shower at the motor-camp before heading to the tavern for a few warm hours by the fire. Such nights were always an adventure.

Firstly because cycling in almost-total darkness is always an adventure. Of course we had a torch, but it was an unwieldy thing, more suited to spotlighting possums than potholes, and it was impossible to grip the torch and the handlebars at the same time. If I didn’t have such poor balance, I could have ridden with no hands and illuminated a safe path home, but after my previous attempts at hand-less riding, I knew such a strategy could only illuminate a path to the nearest hospital. Of course I also still had the tandem bike-light, but as we’d discovered on that windswept night in Ireland when we’d needed it for the first and only time, it cast more light into my eyes than onto the road ahead. Besides, on a traffic-less, light-less road, your eyes quickly adjust to following that pale ribbon of road unwinding beneath your feet, and the feeling of detachment which overwhelms you makes it a strangely soothing experience.

Secondly, because I never knew what we’d find upon our return. One night a possum turning away in embarrassment over being caught dancing among the rafters by the sudden revealing light. Another frosty night a black-and-white tomcat huddled on the sofa between Momo and Spindle. Wasn’t it nice that they had a new friend, I thought as the tomcat dashed past us into the darkness. It was only later, after David had departed, that I realised the tomcat hadn’t been there for friendship.

By now we were both beginning to get itchy, and very cold, feet, so we were anxious to get the house to a waterproof, and insulated, state. In fact, I would have liked to move the entire house to a warmer state as well. So we tried to wring every drop of usefulness out of each hour of daylight. Unfortunately the prevalent frosty weather often meant the roof was icy until mid-morning, so there was often little we could do but drink coffee and wait for it to thaw (the roof, not the coffee... it wasn’t that cold). Because the front faces north, it usually defrosted reasonably swiftly, so we started work there, moving over to the south for a few hours as the poplar shadows lengthened across the verandah.

Preparing the roof for its meadow of grass required a number of stages.

Firstly, a framework of purlins had to be constructed. Followed by a layer of plywood to provide a smooth, flat surface for the butynol to adhere to. It was the butynol - an impervious rubber sheeting normally used for lining ponds - which would guarantee no moisture penetrated into the house. Operating from the verandah roof, with David cutting the required lengths as I nailed them onto the ceiling, the entire process proceeded smoothly, especially once we avoided working anywhere there were still patches of the night’s frosty residue.

A grass roof has an insulation value of approximately 6.0, which is more than two times the standard insulation values of a typical New Zealand home, but in a climate with harsh winter frosts and intense summer heat, every extra bit helps. So I’d opted to include another layer of insulation. Unfortunately, at the time I’d never heard of wool batts, and my initial queries regarding alternatives to fibreglass had been met with such bewilderment (as though I were seeking alternatives to oxygen), that I assumed fibreglass was the only insulation material available.

Suppliers usually exhibit symptoms of selective deafness at the first mention of insulation. When I eventually decided to insulate the shed, I was initially amazed at how abundant, and competitive, wool batts had seemingly become. “Wool batts? Yeh, we’ve got a whole warehouse full of them.” But when I went to pick them up, they’d direct me towards the vast pink mountain looming overhead. “But they’re not wool batts.” “Well, some of them are ceiling batts, but most are wall batts.” “No, we’re looking for wool batts, not wall batts. Batts made of wool? You know... baaaa!?” “Wool batts? No, we don’t have any wool batts.” It was to become a familiar conversation before the manufacturer finally gave me the name of a local stockist.

At the time, I’d never really considered pink batts as being potentially hazardous to your health anyway, so I wasn’t too concerned. When it comes to handling strange, artificial substances, I generally heed the manufacturer’s safety instructions. In this case, their only warning involved the threat of excessive inhalation of glass fibres while working with the material in a confined space. Since there was nothing whatsoever confined about standing on top of my roof exposed to the elements, I thought it would be relatively simple.

David was well versed in their perils and wasn’t taking any chances. Not only was he reluctant to handle them with his bare hands more than absolutely necessary, but draped his handkerchief across his mouth to avoid inhaling any glass-fibre fragments. This is not meant in any way to disparage David’s cautious approach - precautions, like religion, are a question of personal choice. I admit my own throat was itchy with sympathy by the end of the day.

But each time I glimpsed his bandana-covered face, I felt like we were recreating a famous train-top chase scene from one of those old westerns, though it required quite a stretch of the imagination to picture David as a ruthless desperado.

Now that all the major construction was complete, David felt free to leave. He not only wanted to escape the cold, but in the meantime had begun to contemplate establishing an environmental information centre in Dunedin. Not that he had any affiliation with the city, but it was one of the few major towns in New Zealand (apart from Invercargill) without such a centre. So he decided to spend the next two months travelling the South Island gathering information and assessing the degree of support from Dunedin’s green community.

While David set off on his journey of discovery, I continued building with renewed vigour. The sooner I could finish, the sooner I could also consider my options. There was still the floor to be completed, but I wanted to get the roof fully waterproof before lining inside.

Butynol is a relatively expensive material, but it seems to be the only option available if you want a grass roof. We’d investigated other possibilities, of course, but we doubted the building inspector would ever go for any of the more traditional methods such as birch-bark and pitch. It was a little daunting to think we’d have to replace our roof every ten years or so. (It was certainly less of a problem in the days when there was no expensive furniture or appliances to worry about. What’s a few leaks on a rough wooden, or even an earthen, floor?) So we’d had to settle on butynol, despite the cost of over $20 per square metre.

At first glance, a standard galvanised iron roof appears to be a much cheaper option. There are savings to be made not only on the roofing material itself, but also on the quantity of timber required for the heavy roof structure, the layer of plywood sarking, and the complicated guttering system. But when you consider galvanised iron’s maintenance requirements, then add the insulative and aesthetic values of grass (not to mention the sheer vindictive joy of depriving starlings of their traditional, first-choice nesting sites), the cost differences wilt faster than a cabbage sprayed with Roundup. Besides, costs suddenly become irrelevant when it comes between creating your ‘dream house’ and settling for an unsatisfactory compromise.

Meanwhile, the rolls of butynol had arrived, along with two drums of specially-formulated glue, which together smelt like I was about to repair the world’s largest puncture rather than waterproof a roof. After reading through the application instructions, I realised there was a slight hitch in my plans - it required the surface to be completely dry, and after two weeks of frosts and almost-constant drizzle, the plywood was anything but dry. So it would have to wait until I had a series of fine, dry days and frost-free nights ... quite a request for the middle of July.

In the meantime, there was a floor to be finished.