The Avant Garden

and in between all the insects and sweat, the Avant Gardener has been busy busy busy. First, here is a (Why do crows exist?) jus' caws pic of the No One Arch:

so called because it was the the first arch to appear in the No One Else Has One Garden. I love daisies.

The talk of the Rockpile is of desertion, as I have been busy with that time-sucking quilt project. I did as much of the work as possible in the Avant Garden, and the quilt is loaded with Sunshine and various pieces of organic debris. The top is complete and so is the binding ... leaving only the quilting. Tomorrow. And a few more. Here is a pic of the Avant Children with the quilt:

This detail shows the way I did the top:

The River (blue) has an overlock stitch edging on it in bright, multi-colored thread, each layer of the "topo map" is that way, so it appears the energy emanates from the water and flies up the mountains into the sky blue sky. The binding is yarn sewn with more yarn on the edge, and the bottom panel is a polyester king-sized sheet. Just 854 more hours and it will be done. Then what?

I rebuilt 'em Sunday:

And here is a pic, for good measure:

The Creek is low enough to play in, the River not quite yet.

On Saturday, I mowed the lawn and got the Avant Garden Proper all spiffed up:

That yucca plant in the foreground washed ashore in the Avant Garden in the Flood of 2004. This is the first year it will bloom.

I have been trying to find some way to relay just how beautiful the Meditation Garden is right now. The ferns are all full and growing like crazy because of the rain:

and I almost never put pics of the HealthStack in the blog, but this thing has been standing for about two years:    

Originally, the plan was to build a stack that I called "HealthStack" and then when a friend became ill, I would build them a small totem near it and hope the healing vibes would help, or at least remind me to say a few words for my sick friends. But at my age, I know too many sick people and do not have enough rocks to build totems for all of them, so I just look at HealthStack and say a little prayer for the ill ones.

Go ahead and laugh, but it works better than your average Information Technologies Department does with healing computers. And I am not a condescending asshole, either.

as everything I had stacked in moving water is down. The River is in its fourth day of high-water mudiness, taking our driftwood downstream and bringing us driftwood from upstream.

Speaking of streams, last weekend we went to see the folks in Georgia, and (4/5 of the Avant Family, anyway, as one member was smart enough to turn around before we got into the really deep poison ivy) foolishly followed my younger brother on a hike in Little Gum Creek, a cute, clean little stream near the family farm in Oxford, Ga., about 35 miles from Turner Field. Wow that was a long sentence. I'll pause here for a moment while you go back and read that monster again.

OK, where was I? Oh, yes, the walk in the creek. It started out as an ankle deep stream with a sand-n-pebble bottom that was pleasant to the feet. Soon, it got deep. and murky. And not so fun to walk in. People fell. My phone now has funny lines across the screen. Soon we discovered the source of the problem:

 A beaver dam. That's the Avant Daughter on the left and the eldest Avant Son on the right, though the youngest Avant Son went as well. The rest of the hike was easy and fun again.

 Just for fun, here is a pic of a magnolia blossom from the tree in my grandma's yard: Grandma Ellington was as beautiful as this bloom on her magnolia.

 Remember the quilt top? It is ... not almost done, but we're creeping toward the finish line. The Meditation Garden looks so nice right now, with the amazing rainfall we've had ... I keep trying to invite people over to see it, but everyone either has a busted knee or is going to the Beach or just not speaking to me. So come by, if you like. It's free, as always, though if you come by tomorrow I might hand you a mower.

"Finally -- it stopped raining." And I wouldn't mind more, but we had some rain for about 12 days in a row. The River has been high, but none of the stacks are down. This guy, for example:

has been standing since Feb. 26, in spite of four inches of rain this month. Rob calls that one Rho.

So I do, too.

About 75 metres upstream from Rho, I made a very delicate Goddess On a Pedestal:

She's quite beautiful, very ladylike. Demure, I'd say, though young and vivacious.

This is just a cool photo, in my humble opinion:

And so is this:

The wires make shadows, which will travel across a canvas as the Sun sets every night. At least that is the plan today; it could change.

And in a moment of high-water madness, the Avant Spouse and I tied some stones into some muslin and tossed it into the muddy River: 

a sort of ultra-hippy, all natural tie-dye projick. After six days and nights in the current, I pulled them out and the best one (the one the spouse tied) now looks like this:

 Rob doesn't know it yet, but the next step for this thing is re-tying and placing in a ditch near his house where the water runs red when it rains. Then I think I will splatter some polk berries on it, frame it with driftwood and hang it in the Avant Garden Proper. Or something like that.

And just for fun, here is a shot of the Avant Garden Proper:

following one of our recent thundershowers.

I kayakked down to Rob's house yesterday and added another arch-on-pedestal in the area Rob calls "The Coven." Rob forwarded this pic he calls "The Coven Collection": The new one is in the lower right ...

The grass and weeds are growing faster than one Gardener can tackle, but at least kudzu has not arrived here ... yet. We're off to Atlanta, where I hope more madness will ensue. My niece is having her first birthday party and I have a nice stone picked out for her. She deserves the best, so I chose granite.

being overwhelmed by the "Springatility of it all" and all that nonsense about Spring? Well, now I am overwhelmed by invasive species. Spring takes a whole new twist when the BitterSweet and Multiflora Rose come on strong. Beside every root of those pests grows a poison ivy plant. There are too many nice ferns and things in the woods to spray wildly, not to mention I live on the River. It's aggravating and slightly depressing ...

... but that hasn't stopped the madness in the Avant Garden. Remember this guy:

The object was to take a photo of him wet, then dry, and then one when time wore off the mud on this side, but it just keeps on raining ... so never mind.

I also redid the bench in the Meditation Garden:

I went through a "hammer in every picture"phase . I don't know why.Rob and I went on a trip to Bent Creek last Friday and I fixed up the vandalized arch, but now it has a new name -- HemorrhoidArch.

See what I mean about that hammer?

You can see why without me linking images, right?

As for the hammer, my father bought that in 1972(?) when he had a buncha bricks delivered (I moved every one of them twice) to make a patio in the back yard. It had not been used since, so he gave it to me a few years back. He is also the genetic source of my hands, capable of things that amaze me sometimes without me having to think about what they're doing ... like they have minds of their own. My dad and I both have hands that just sorta know how things will go together. We both build things when we can, needless to say.

Rob later painted the hammer yellow so I could find it in the leaves, but the paint kinda faded and now it is the color of yellow leaves and oft-lost.

Anyway ...

Just for kicks, I decided to try this stack:

Rob seemed to really like it and suggested I put it in the Dave's Faves folder. And I will. Just remind me. A few times.

OK ... weird story. Got time for this? I'll hurry.

I built this stack:

on March 18. It clicked beautifully. The material was A1, just like my parking space at work-work (haha). "Gorgeous!" was the most common comment heard around the Rockpile. Anyway, I built some simple companion pieces for it and constructed another arch upstream:

And as I mentioned in the April 27 entry, "Bent Creek has seen a spate of Avant Garden vandalism lately." Someone knocked both of these arches over. And I know it was a "someone," because I had taken one of those "FallingApartRocks" out of Bent Creek and placed it on the Bank. I wanted to see how it would fall apart as it dried out ... anyway, that stone was back in the Creek, in the middle of the pile of rubble that had been the TureArch. So I rebuilt it, and built it a nice arch to keep it company:

The next weekend I went back and both were knocked over. So I did some lame, flat-earth stacks, just to see what would happen. When Rob and I went back to Bent Creek on Friday, the lame, flat-earth stacks were standing, but the aforementioned FallingApartRock was sitting atop the rubble of what had been the TureArch. And that is when, with Rob's encouragement, I built the also-aforementioned HemorrhoidArch...

Whilst mucking around in the Creek, I came across a beautiful mica-filled stone (when I first spied it glistening in the Rapids of the Creek, I was sure it was gold and Rob and the Familia Avant Gardener were rich!) and decided to leave it as a peace offering:

atop the doubly-aforementioned FallingApartRock.

Am I involved in some bizarre communication with someone? If so, what is the message? Or is this whole thing just the working of my totally post-rational mind?

Another sleepless night ....

Remember the quilt top I'm sewing? It sorta looks like this now:

Not a great pic, but I can't get any further away with that camera. At the rate I am going, by the time I finish it, Earth will have  warmed so much that I won't be able to give it away.

Anyway, I am off to get sub sandwiches for dinner -- a chance to drive fast and listen to The Cramps. No time for a spell-check. Endure with grace!