The Avant Garden

I just can't stay inside very much. While I shoulda been cooking dinner one day last week, I snuck down to the River (the Downstream Rockpile area, to be more exact) and did this one: 

The next day I had a hankering to stack something big, so I went over to Rob's to see what would happen if I stacked a lot of rocks -- 15, in this case -- on top of each other:
It's about 6 feet tall. I want it taller, but Rob says I have to wait until it falls to mess with it.
 

Remember last entry I mentioned the geese on the island behind the Avant Garden? Well now that they have moved on downstream, I waded out to the island to see the remains of their nest:  

They keep house more betterly than I do.  

 
Also, check out these gorgeous ferns in Rob's garden:

The picture just doesn't capture it ...

He was nice enough to give me one.

While over at Rob's, I fixed up this thing by the driveway:

Those are come choice rocks in a bad spot. Cars hit 'em; most recently, Rob in the Toyota truck. Rob's Taliban-tough Toyota Truck's only fault is that it has the turning radius of the space shuttle. Or worse.

Yesterday, to celebrate the Avant Spouse's Birthday, we went to Bent Creek to picnic at the Unphotographable Herd of Arches. They were all knocked down again, and there was a smelly dead snake in the middle of the pack. Is the rockstack mafia trying to tell me something? I didn't listen. I ate too much good food and fixed 'em. Later I took a photo of my teenage daughter and a dang big rock I balanced:
She's probably thinking about what dopes the Avant Parents are ...

 One of the things the Avant Spouse wanted for her birthday was to have her pile of dead-batteried watches repaired. She had seven watches that didn't even have enough juice to blink "12:00" over and over again, so I took them to the jeweler for repair. To gift-wrap them for her, I made each one a little stocking and hung them from one of the driftwood trees that follow me home:
We like to do things the traditional, old-fashioned way here in the Avant Home.

 She cut the stockings open and watches fell out and we sang "Happy Birthday." Badly, but with sentiment.

I mentioned something before about hosting the AC-T plant exchange. Polly McDaniel was one of my co-conspirators in the thing, and she forwards this photo of The No One Else Has One Garden:
Sedum-n-stone, like Montana-n-Rice. 

The aforementioned Polly McDaniel  has taken this Garden Asheville Web site and run with it. It has become an awesome pile of knowledge and experience, and it is only a few months old. Check it out if you're a gardener, or not.

Speaking of Web sites, VineyardRocks.com is pretty awesome if you are into this rock thing.

We seemed to be in the express line for summer, but yesterday was sweater weather. I still haven't had my first skeeter bite of the year, though I have swatted a few.  I am currently working on a mobile of things I pulled out of the River plus some other junk. Should be interesting. Or just strange, depending on where you come from.

If quality of life is determined by the beauty of an area's Spring, we Ashevilleans are a lucky, happy lot.  The Dogwoods are gorgeous this year. For example, take a look at the pic from Prom Night in the Avant Garden:
The Avant Son (Matt) and his very pretty and cool girlfriend, Amy.

It's also possible that after last year's deadly late freeze, this Spring is actually average.  Either way, I am sucking up as much of these halcyonic, pre-skeeter-n-heat days of Spring as possible.

That blue thing beside the Prom pair is a tree-ring with some blue material stretched over it. It has solar lights in it and at night, it looks like this:
In the background is the moodlighting for the mating pair. 

I went over to Rob's one day and made this not-so-great movie: 

It mighta been better had the Sun not come out and I pulled my hood on in a more suave manner. I thot it turned out quite foolishly, but that's the Avant Garden.

Strangely, I fixed the arch in the foreground with the cape, and when Rob and I walked back to see it yesterday, its cousin behind it was down. So I fixed it up:
In the bucket is a prize fern that Rob was nice enough to give me 

Rob suggested the obligatory keyhole shot and I happily obliged:
They're cousins, though I am sketchy on the details.

I went out to Bent Creek on Sunday and fixed up a few things, such as the Unphotografable Herd of Arches: 

And finally, I neglected to mention our pair of geese-a-laying on the island in the River behind the house. They had three babies and the whole family disappeared day before yesterday. Yesterday I found them safe and sound behind Rob's house:

From my backyard half a mile downstream to Rob's.Since I was shooting into the setting sun, the pics didn't turn out that well, and of course, the best one would have to have a damn 5-gallon bucket on the bank. But the goslings are cute. I hope they don't end up coyote-scat. That's not nearly as pretty a sight.

Does anyone except me and my wife remember this thing?

I call it "Windscratcher"  The upended rhododendron was a gift of the River during the 2004 Floods. The pointed stone I found while snorkeling in the Keys in 2004 and knew was perfect for the assignment and the "rope" is made of Oriental Bittersweet, which is everywhere. The point of the exercise is that the wind blows and the stone scratches designs in the sand. Here's a closer-upper view:
That color sand was all they had. Vomitous!

I also finished the New Ghost of Ethel Bledsoe (took 10 inches off the length of her dress) and much to my wife's consternation, hung her over the River down near the Meditation Garden. I think she is lovely:  

And this thing that I made while listening to the song "Conventional Wisdom" is back, as the suburbanite-special bushes the contractor used to hide the heat pump needed trimming again:

Why are we all embracing conventional wisdom  in a world that's just so unconventional?

To help this mating pair of arches along, I have provided them with some "mood lighting" in the form of a solar lamp:

A friend of mine, whom I have never actually met, forwards this shot of some stonework in Whittier, N.C., which is about 2 hours west of Asheville:  
That's some interesting stuff.

I think it's waycool and hope to take a tour someday. It's worth a two-hour drive -- with the right music on the radio. 

I mowed the Avant Garden today in preparation for the AC-T plant exchange tomorrow at 14:30 (that's 2:30 p.m. to you and me) and right now it looks the best it has in a while, though I had a busy week at work and never got around to doing the two-years-worth-of-weeding-in-two-days. Ah well, maybe the Gardening Angels will show up.

not on purpose, as leaving Asheville is never by choice. My grandmother, Montine Ellington, is on her deathbed in Hospice (bless 'em) down in Georgia, so I will be outta commission for a while as I go down and attend services. Grandma and her kin are not just Southern, they're country. This funeral will be an event with crowds (grandma has a lot of friends) and food and preaching and Mascara-stained tissues clutched in white-gloved hands.

I love her tremendously, and the world was  not a better place when she suffered a mostly-debilitating stroke in December of 2006. Not long after that, we went down to Atlanta to visit her and I did this little stack -- "Cross on a Hill" -- over where Dial Mill Road crosses Gum Creek, for her:

Sadly, she has reached a point now where it's time for her to move to another plane, as her earthly body isn't functioning.  If she gets the afterlife she deserves and so strongly  believes  in, she will rule in her Heaven.