The Avant Garden

As I 'splain in the video, my friend Zach Pine, whom I have never met but really want to, hurt his back wresting some rocks from frozen Idaho tundra. The injury may require surgery. Zach lives in California, too far for a casserole, so today I did the  The Get Well Zach Stack while Rob did the videotaping:

On Dec. 2 I ventured back to the Gash's Spillway rockpile and did this old friend:
Just like last year, but with another arch.

Does anyone remember its name from last year? I'll have to look it up.

A week later I was returning from an early-morning shopping trip and stopped on the other side of the River to take this photo:
It lost its head. Bird or gravity or both, most likely. 

 It was about 19F that morning.

I also have a new video on YouTube. I have to admit, I asked someone (Rob) to film this, though the genesis for the stack was before I knew about this YouTube toy. In a sense, it was a stack that I did for video, which violates the Prime Directive as I understand it. However, I had already begun gathering material and envisioning the stack before I ever thought of taping it, so we'll let it slide this time.

 
Remind me next time to wear my robe and rocksmock. It's a more interesting getup than the Falcons jersey, though my lowly Falcons did win yesterday. 

but it's too dark and cold to play. Hopefully tomorrow will be a snowday and we can all stay home and play.

We had a bit of vandalism in the Avant Garden, which made me quite sad.  I hope whatever offense I have proffered upon the perpetrator has now been properly repaid and we can all go on with our lives in peace. Thanksgiving weekend I went to see the folks in the Atlanta area and went to the closest best rockpile, right there where Dial Mill Road goes over Little Gum Creek. I did a variety of things there, but this was a favorite:
You can park on the right just before the bridge and walk down.

When I returned to Asheville after Thanksgiving, I had a few days off. I went over to Rob's to play with the victimized stacks and robbed the rubble piles of the biggest and best archables to make this:

Twelve rocks, just like an arch oughtta ... It's the new biggest arch I have ever done. I guess it's just over three feet tall? I used a handtruck to move the rocks, mostly, and built the interior scaffolding from logs from one of Rob's downed trees.

Rob stacked an arch when he was visiting his daughter Chris in Michigan back in October. Here's a photo from that date and a more recent one: 

 Rob's Michigan Arch for all Seasons

I have four videos on YouTube now (yep, it's that easy). If you click on this link you can see my favorite and click on the "Click to see more from this user" button to see the rest. These are all over a year old, I think. I kinda forgot I had them, and now 185 people have looked at one of them.