That the frost line in Ithaca is four feet underground; that you must dig below that to build a basement;
That you must lay gravel beside the walls, so groundwater drains away from the house;
That concrete has high embodied energy; that mixing gravel with concrete makes for economical buildings: gravel being cheap, plentiful and local;
That there are self-serve gravel piles near Ithaca, where you can load gravel in the night and leave money under the door;
That octagonal houses were a 1800s American fad, fanned by a man called Orson Squire Fowler;
That the virtues of an octagonal plan (extolled in his book) turned out few to be true;
That grain silos look like lipbalm; that Unadilla, NY, is the last company in the US that still makes wooden silos;
That 'kill' is a word of Dutch origin meaning 'creek'; that New York State is full of such place names -- Peekskill, Fishkill, Catskill, Cobleskill;
That from Peekskill one can see the Beacon mountains, home to Pete Seeger;
That slate comes in many colours (slate to me having been a synonym for dark grey); that some of them have the green of lakewater;
That the quarries of Vermont produces red slate, red being rarest and most coveted (expensive);
That this shade of red has neither fiery glow nor gentleness in it, it is but dull ground -- I disdain it;
(That I like purple and mottled green (!) slate best);
That he meant to buy 50 pavers but after choosing all the ones he liked best he had 51; that we hauled them home in a little trailer hitched to the car;
That the Mohawk valley is the only natural passageway from the American East Coast to the Midwest (without crossing any bridges);
That all the major cities of Upstate New York are lined up along the Mohawk; that the New York Thruway runs along the river;
That there are truck stops off the Thruway, where he slept sometimes; (that one day I may accompany him (!) on his life-on-the-roads);
That there are many locks over the Mohawk River; in the town of Palantine Bridge we pulled up at one Lock E14;
That I hung over the railings looking at the dam water pouring and pouring;
That it was a windy day by the lock, that my wide skirts were flying, and he laughed at me, and we kissed on the grassy bank.

(Being things I learnt on my holiday)