cob bench building

I forgot to say that yesterday morning we visited Las Vegas' permaculture group at a community garden and helped them work on a cob bench. Cob is a mixture of sand, clay-y dirt, water, and straw. It's worked into loose spheres and lumped together to make a structure, in this case a bench. I mean, when it's lumped together, the lumps, which are the cobs, don't look spherical, not anymore.

There were maybe ten of us, including two kids, and I liked all the people. When I hear "workshop" I think of handouts and different topics with transitions between topics. But it was cob building only. We mixed the straw in with out feet. I mean, I didn't, but others did. A scary thing is that the dirt could have glass or nails in it, so we screened it with a screen. But I was still leery of people smashing the straw in, in case a piece of glass was still there.

We had cookies, water or suntea, fruit. It was fun to help.