Concrete mixer trucks thunder past our house, while low loaders lug steel girders to newly leased land. Giant excavators trundle towards virgin land, moving at caterpillar pace, gripping and churning the tarmac beneath their heavy tracks. A new neighbour drills a well. The steady knock of metal against rock beats incessantly through the day, boring slowly towards the hidden pools.

There’s an exit from the smog and traffic jams of Ulaanbaatar as people build second, or new holiday, homes. Edging to the river’s bank, fences eat up this once unfenced land. Claiming their rights, metal pens creep into the woods, diverting path and track, evicting squirrel and chipmunk in their wake. Electric saws and vintage radios sing out their music, smothering the lark and swallow’s song.

Amid the diggers and canary yellow cranes, people labour. Their black hair shines in the sun, their shirtless chests berry brown. They work from morning to last light and beyond, eager to the get the job done, eager to collect their bounty. Creating floor plans, pouring foundations, and building walls, they sit astride ceiling joists smoking and downing chilled cola.

They start so well, enthusiastic and energised to get the house built. But something happens along the way. The money runs dry; the cost is more than they thought. Someone is sick and money is needed for medical bills. Dishonest builders abscond with funds and the customer is powerless to continue. Or a vicious storm destroys the site.

The reasons are many and varied. But the building work, for this year at least, has come to a halt. Bricks, ready for the builder’s hand, stand untouched. Wood, stacked and cut for beams and joists, is forsaken. Some begin again and go on to complete their new home, while others never return.

Unfinished buildings surround us. Enclosures littered with reinforcing bar and concrete blocks have become new homes for sparrows and wagtails. And broken homes built, on soft soil bare testimony to well-intentioned, but ill-prepared, projects. Abandoned half-builds are being stripped by opportunists of doors and windows, stair and wire.

It is a sad sight. Was it not possible to return, I wonder, to resume the work and finish the job? The reasons for discontinuing are largely unknown. Most are valid but some are less so. What is it that trips us up, that causes us to abandon the task we were given?

Perhaps next year, they’ll resume building. Perhaps the plan will be more solid and they’ll come equipped with all they need to move beyond the disarrayed building site and the messiness of work left unfinished. And perhaps, they will complete, with joy, what they purposed.