The Avant Garden

...and nothing fell. Drifting off to sleep, I heard it coming louder and louder and then it passed through the house, making the windows creak and the smoke detectors chirp. Even the most delicate thing I have up -- Godrock and the K-T stack -- both withstood the shaking. Speaking of the K-T stack, check this out:
Texas star hibiscus, I think ...

The K-T stack ( I have a whole family stack series, including the dog, in what I jokingly call "The Permanent Collection" ) is the delicate one in the background.

I got the Sunbaskers:

all set up again and thought about the insanity of it all ... an arcing line of 15 arches built with rocks from the River, going up the hill a wee bit and then back into the River ... that pretty much only I know or care about. When the River rises and they fall, I feel bad and rebuild them. Then they fall and are rebuilt again, and no one knows but me. How sane is that? Rocks are heavy. Is it sane to keep a bunch of rocks standing up in secret arches? Have I set up a semi-sisyphean task for myself?

This weekend we are off to Blowing Rock to visit my in-laws. I do not know if I will do anything worth photographing other than help them move. Katrina is rumored to bring us four inches of rain early next week.

... in a cellar bar in Victoria Street, Hamilton, New Zealand. They were a married couple whose last name was "Day." The song that stuck in my head -- as she scratched a washboard and clanged cowbells and he played St. Louis blues electric guitar -- was the final piece, also called "Two Good Days." The lyrics went, "All I ask for, oh Lord, is two good days in a row ... two good days in a row." And every time I have had two good days in a row in the Avant Garden, I thankfully hum that tune.

Yesterday evening, I went for an after-dinner drive to Bent Creek to check on my creations. Right as I got there, the clouds parted and the sun didn't shine down in ray form, but in a yellow, origin-less glow that filled the Valley. I snapped a better shot of the Jilted Serpent:
Still showing off ...

I am glad I was able to scrounge up enough yellowish rocks so it could easily be seen underwater. I have become quite fond of this one.

The original Bent Serpent:

had a visitor:
So busy they didn't even notice me ...

This afternoon my daughter (K-T, 11) and I went tubing down the River and stopped by this rocky spot that I have seen from the road and always wanted to visit. She had homework to do so I had to hurry, but did this:
I will be back with more time and better rocks ...

We floated to Rob's and took his Taliban-tough-Toyota truck home. Tomorrow if the rains hold off I am going to go back and have some more fun.

Later in the portion of the Avant Garden that is behind my house, I did a pair of arches that share a keystone:
Photo taken from atop my bucket ... 

I had thought of doing this a long time ago, and then my friend D-U-G suggested it a while back, and tonight I did it. It should bear weight well, so I think it might be the place to try another arch-on-a-pedestal.

My camera ran out of battery power, so I only got one shot of this one:
Young buck doesn't give up easily ...

I believe he is the jilted suitor of the Stone Serpent's new wife, whose name is Bonny. If you look closely in the foreground, you can see him showing off the fan beneath his neck. I've heard Stone Serpents do that to attract females, though this time it did not work. Last time I looked, Bonny was still steaming upstream toward her mate. 

Later I went over to Rob's and things didn't go that well, and I ended up with this :
An hour for that?

Rob said I should take a picture of it from this angle, as the tall one does not look possible from this spot. I get extra points every time someone says, "That doesn't look possible," so I was thrilled. Here's the picture:
I like working this spot ...

taken with my "old" camera, hence the burnout.

I'd planned on going back to Bent Creek, but I am tired. The Asheville blogger meeting was interesting. They's good folks.

I woke up early this morning and went to Bent Creek while the mist still hung over the water and discovered that The Bent Serpent has taken a wife:
I think she is pretty ...

She's healthy and strong:
I think her name starts with a "B" ...

and is fighting the current pretty well. The Bent Serpent was in rapids on the day I built him, but the Creek fell and he is now wet but not in rapids. She is in rapids in a place where she won't ever be out of fast water.

I also repaired Meditations on Thominator, as we still miss the ol' tosser. It now has five arches, though I am not too sure the one on the left will stay:
All these arches have high Feugenot ratings ...  

So the Bent Creek Sculpture Walk is back to four reasonably well-organized piles of stone now: the Serpent couple, Meditations on Thominator and Independence Circle. I'll have to make a new page to show its renovations and decide if I want to add anything to it. I have reached the point there that to manipulate more material would make me feel like I was overdoing it.

Last night I put about three hours int0 a nestegg on an arch and right as I headed up to the house, it fell without provocation. Ah  well. I am kicking around the idea of meeting up with some other bloggers in the area this evening, mainly in the hopes that I can learn to upload video. Of course, I will have to either buy more memory or delete some old files first, but I can do that. Video is cool, though I have no video as cool as this: Danny Brown's Balancing Point Click on that. It's plenty cool.

The AshVegas dude sent me the link to Danny Brown's Balancing Point a few days ago and I just got around to watching it today.

It's worth sitting through the ad for, I promise. Raining bleddy hell here.