The Avant Garden

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.

Let's see what becomes of this: This is Rob's Arch Number 23, we think, and my first attempt at video editing, we know. We have something special planned for the 25th Rob's Arch.