The Avant Garden

though not necessarily because of anything spectacular that I have done. Last week I e-mailed my boss (Joy) this photo:
Most interesting characteristic? His slowly-drying wet spot ...

and asked if she had room in her garden for such a thing. She sounded thrilled, so Saturday morning, after liberating the driftwood from the detritus pile, I picked up Rob and we headed south to Hendersonville. After pastries and coffee with Joy and her husband Bob, we had enough energy to get this rendition of "Stumpy" done:

Does this increase or decrease job security?Joy and Bob documented the whole thing (fortunately, there was not a trip to the ER involved) with her super-camera and I would like to find a way to make the images smaller and into a slideshow.

Also last week I did this seashell kinda thing, using progressively smaller (or larger, depending upon your perspective) arches around a tree and then filling in the spaces in between:
What lives in there?

Inspired by that effort and Rob's complaint that the arch-no-one-could-see in the Line of Monks fell anyway, I decided to replace the arch-no-one-could-see with a bigger and hopefully better seashell kinda thing around the tree that obscured the vision of passersby, thus creating an arch no-one-could-see. So now there is one of these instead of a single arch:
Over his shoulder is the Arch-with-tree-as-Keystone ...

Those things are truly material hogs, but only Rob and the City of Asheville have one.

Downstream from Rob is a nice island behind Bill-n-Cynthia's house, a place where I keep something standing pretty regularly. For some reason, the last two times I have been down there, I have had a real hard time, though in the end got an arch-on-pedestal to stand again:
Looks peaceful, aye? Water temp is about 51F.

Today I went down to Gashes Pond and accidentally knocked the Mice-n-Men arches down and decided to rebuild ... bigger, of course. The second drop of the keystone took, and after rolling around and looking from different angles, I took this photo of the arch and a stander I did nearby:
Please appreciate the photo -- I got dirty for it.

It's almost other-worldly, or Easter Island like, and not quite as cool as the photo makes it out to be. The trees help.

Also today I played with more detritus (is it just me, or does "detritus" sound like what it is?) and did these arches on a piece of driftwood (plank variety) across the old sewer line:
Should I get a tetanus shot?

I am a member of http://www.rockbalance.org/, an "addicted community" of rock manipulators based in Switzerland. I rec'd an e-mail from the Webmaster (Krethiplethi) that read:

Hi Dave,

i would like to thank you so much for your inspiration.  I like the arches so much, that yesterday i went to try out, what came in my mind, when i saw the bucket on your pictures. I took a "near-barrel"-bucket and put it on his side. In the middle of two baserocks. The distance between the stones are 1,2 meters (3,93 feet). The bucket (about 3 feet) is formed conical, so i can pull it out when the arch is finished. In that way i'm able to build bigger archs, not only 5 or 6 Stones. But i needed about four hours. Who cares! Rockbalance.org proudly presents a world premiere and you are the first to see the pictures:
My ego soared over this one ....

Krethiplethis first 11 rock arch, inspired by Dave "Caretaker of avant garden" and so it is called:

Dave's bridge.

I was absolutely thrilled that something I did helped someone across the Atlantic and to have a construction named after me. My head swelled bigger and faster than the Grinch's heart grew that day.

Tomorrow we are supposed to have a high of 68F. Maybe my boss will give me the afternoon off so I can frolic in the sunshine. Probably not. I am probably as behind at work-work as I am in Avant Garden projects. No, not really. I have already laid out more plans to Rob than we can accomplish in a lifetime, and I will catch up at work-work.

it must have been a good weekend. One thing I spent time on this weekend that did not involve pain was the Lexicon of common terms, a sort of dictionary of words and phrases I use around the Avant Garden. A work in progress, I hope to eventually illustrate all its entries in addition to offering real pronunciation symbols. Why? Because if I don't, it just won't get done.

On Wednesday the level of the River was down enough that I could reach the shelf (it's in the Lexicon) of the Gashes Pond Arch without my waders, and with rain in the forecast, I had to do it then. I rebuilt the Arch-on-a-pedestal:
It looks so ... foreign, somehow.

and took this fancy photograph through the railing of the bridge between Azalea Road and the Nature Center. A few days later I came back and a fellow traveler had added to it:
Mysterious ... is the stick necessary?

The highlight of the thing was the stick. I could not decide if the stick were necessary for all of the rocks involved to stay involved, or if it were an afterthought. I like it better as an integral part of the design from the beginning.

Saturday morning, the foul weather we have come to associate with weekends (three crappy ones in a row!) came through. As I worked on these guys:
Stumpy and Doubledecker ...

sleet and rain and snow began mixing in the air around me while the temp hovered around 34F. I went to Rob's to work on his line of monks, of which these are two of eleven: 

This second one is the tallest of the lot ... and went back later and did this triple arch thing in a crack in a rock where I had previously made an arch and Rob complained that it was too far away from the trail to be seen so we moved it down to the front of the line. But the space called me back and I made an even better one:
It's nicer, and you still can't see it from the trail...

We're almost done with the line of monks. Rob seems to really like them, and that's all that really counts.

This morning I went down to Gashes Pond and decided to build a bigger arch than I usually do because there is plenty of driftwood to use as a mould and lots of material. First I did this big arch using the biggest rocks I could find in the area:
A new favorite thing ...

and then I added that smaller one on the side. At first I thot it was a pirate with a parrot on his shoulder but then realized it was more a big oaf like Lenny with George on his shoulder standing by a River in Of Mice and Men.

We look forward to a week of really yucky weather ... highs in the 40s with some precip mixed in. Chances are I will throw up a rock or two anyway. We'll see what sticks.

February has been a bitter month so far. Today -- Saturday, Feb. 11, 2006 -- featured highs around 36F and precipitation all day. Snow mixed with rain that just dripped and chilled. I played out in it all day, of course.

The absolute coolest thing I have standing at the mo is the BalancingBeam:
Note the yellow/orange rock towards the end ...

All rocks on it must be part of an arch, and it must balance on the downed pine tree, swaying freely up and down. And as I say over and over again and for that I apologize -- 95 percent of the time, if anything I make moves, it falls. So yeah, I am quite pleased with it. Every day that I go to Gash's Pond (where the River flows through the Nature Center) I see how the beam is doing. Sometimes it will be sitting down all the way on the yellow/orange rock on the right-hand side, sometimes it will be all the way down into the debris pile on its left. Some days I add just one rock to this last arch:
This is a well-adjusted BalanceBeam ..

and other days I put an arch on top of the arches on the the left-hand side. I have yet to completely note the causes of its changing center of gravity, but I think it has something to do with rain wetting the beam and then the sun drying off one side more rapidly than the other? Could that be it? Another sleepless night.

On Friday I rebuilt Rob's Arch
Another good rendition, but I question its toughness ... again:

in the hope the National Weather Service would deliver the 3-5" of snow they mentioned and I could get some cool photos of icicles on it.

This morning I rolled out of bed and did the panic shopping (milk, eggs, bread) southerners do when someone uses the s-word, then set out for Bent Creek.

I was pleased to find that everything I did last week was still standing. I goofed around working on an arch with some pretty big rocks then decided to see if I could include this reeeally big rock, which I achieved using the bucket method:
Did I have enough weight on that big one?

I went on to turn that into this :
Three arches, two rocks on ground ...

After a hot lunch of red beans and rice, the dog and I made the rounds and ended up at Rob's in the drizzle. I did quite a few balances, but this one is a favorite:

Interesting rocks balance most interestingly ...

Rooting around on the hillsides around Rob's I found some interesting rocks, including this one that sorta looks like a bear:
Rob's property is rapidly filling up with rocks ...

though I almost never tell people that rocks or stacks look like anything. That's not my intent, usually. I just like to make them click together.

I still hold out hope that we will get that snow tomorrow. They owe us, dammit! I think I am going to go to Rob's in the morning and see if I there are icicles on his Arch. Will take photos.

but I have spent some well-layered time outdoors anyway. Last Friday I suddenly decided to fix Rob's Arch again:
Possibly the best Rob's Arch ever ...

Rumor had it rain was imminent, so I decided to rebuild it while the water was at a reasonably low level. Improved over the last one by a third rock in the pedestal, it also had a nicely circular opening and four rocks sticking up above the rest at various o'clocks ... for about 17 hours. The rains did come and as lightning flashed, I took this last photo Saturday morning:
It lasted about 2 more hours after this ...

The River kept rising and I went back later to take a photo and it was gone. The good news is the River is almost back to a reasonable level for making repairs.

Sunday morning it was 28F as I left to go out and play at Bent Creek. It was colder there, but my woolies kept me warm as I stood in the Creek for about three hours. First I did this "2-1 Arch" thing on a stump:
Some great rocks in there, aye?

Just upstream I found a nice little rapid to play in and first did a five-arches-in-a-circle thing that surely won't show up in a photograph very well and a stander:
The Stander is more impressive, but the arches more work ...

And just for fun, here is a bonus photograph of the Super Bowl Sunday Stander:
Super Bowl Sunday Stander is a rather lofty title for a rock, I reckon ...

Monday I went down to the rockpile at Gash's Pond and played in the driftwood pile a while:

A work in progress ...Today was a clear but cold Tuesday, but I helped my sister-in-law move instead of messing with things natural. Now that I have my weekly good deed out of the way, I can be a self-centered rockstacking jerk for the rest of the week. We'll see what the weather does, unless there is still a weather shortage. I heard we may have to import weather from overseas to keep up with demand.