Elizabeth Volden - 28 March 2021

Hi pals!

 
The weather has been so nice up here lately, although it did just start raining. Overall, it has been great for getting out and about. It has also been nice to begin leaving my giant coat at home. Honestly, I think the nice weather and the time change have just made everything more pleasant in general. I have been staying pretty busy running errands for the office, going on site visits, or working on drawings and renderings. Among all of these things, I have also gotten to meet a few clients. I always enjoy connecting with them, whether in person, over the phone, or on Zoom. The ones that I have met all very nice and seem so excited about designing their living spaces.

I had a lot of fun last Friday when Bernice and I met some potential clients at their home. They own a building company, and you could tell that they were dying for someone to give them a reason to buy more machinery. We walked around with them for hours and talked about the design goals for their property. They care a lot about wildlife and want to help the wetlands surrounding their house. We spent some time in their home too, and you could tell that they have such a fun and unique style. They also had a super sweet black cat! Anyway, that’s just a long way of me saying that it’s nice to have some human connection again to act as a reminder of why our profession is exciting and meaningful at all levels. If I am still around when this project is developing, you can bet that their renderings will have some of their favorite birds :)

I made it out to the beach on the only non-windy day here in Sandwich. I wasn't really expecting the water to look this still though. It was fun to watch people skipping rocks (something I have never figured out)

I like walking out to the bigger rocks. It doesn't seem like it, but I think it's supposed to be a jetty. Anyway, it's fun to look around in the little tide pools here to see what is hiding in there.

You have to watch out for little critters on the rocks! There are snails everywhere <3, and I definitely don't want to be a snail killer 

I spent a few hours on a construction site earlier this week. I'm so glad we came when these guys were laying cobbles. It was so neat to watch how skilled they were.

Apparently she has a reputation of being a lunch stealer

I can only imagine how nice these grasses will be one day

Some fun kites

NOT my picture haha. This is an old BWL project.

There are so many crushed stone and oyster shell driveways in the area. At first I just assumed it was related to resources and aesthetics (and it is), but a lot of towns around here lack any real infrastructure for stormwater. Everything here is just so old and small that overtime these drives have just become part of regional landscape design. The ribbon drives here are extremely charming too. Anyway, I just thought that was a neat little bit of information about the normalization of stormwater-friendly design.