The Avant Garden

Thursday morning I woke up with my right elbow giving me a ton of pain. Yesterday morning, arm in sling, feverish and headachy, I went out to Bent Creek to find this:
Everyone and everything is against me!

A tree fell on the Bent Serpent, knocking over his biggest "hump." Is it a sign? Bursitis (it ain't just for grandmas who smell like Vick's vap-o-rub anymore) in my right (non-stacking) elbow and a tree across a favorite piece. I came home, plopped my exhausted ass down on the sofa and told my wife, "I quit."

I ended up at the ER and got some X-rays, antibiotics and advice. The rest of my body feels better today (Monday), as the antibiotics fight the infection, but the elbow is still tender as can be. I do not have enough energy to stack feathers today. Back to the sofa.

... most likely a nut loose between the keyboard and the floor, prevent me from loading thumbnails to the blog, so I put some of the photos of the recent vacation of The5Russells and what I did thereon into The Avant Garden West, July 2005 photo gallery. We saw plenty of other cool things,  and I did a few other things, but I am running out of storage space and will have to either purchase more or delete some old files before I can put up more photos.

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. -- Edward Abbey

too tired to type tonight. I messed around with the photos some but made a file so big I can't open it or something, so I give up for the evening. Here's one photo of something I did that I like:
The Virgin River was slightly up ...

Friday morning we decided to go back to Zion for one last play and this was the last thing I did before we left. Cute, I think.

More tomorrow when I've rid myself of roadrash.

... and hopefully returns home to Western North Carolina, camera cards loaded with "work" worth blogging about. We fly from ATL to HOU to Las Vegas today, if Hurricane Dennis lets us. Back Sunday, July 24. I heard it was 106F in Vegas a few days ago. This time tomorrow, I will probably wander the LV strip dreaming of the cool of Bent Creek:
Will attempt this again ...

I put my digital in a Ziploc baggie and put it underwater to snap that. Will try again.

It's this UnderWaterArch (the only one still standing):
My father-in-law took this photo....

Check out the debris caught on this stick in the midst of the sunbasking arches:

I wonder if they were scared down there?

Have a great two weeks. Check back in a few weeks; I will have some interesting updates. We aren't taking the laptop, as we'd have to leave it in a locked car in the Desert on a regular basis. Not good for man or machine. But we can be reached via cell phone.

... to catch up on stuff. I've been "working" a lot more than blogging lately.  The rain from Cindy wasn't too bad. The River came up about five feet, I reckon. All (14) of my sunbasking arches:  are well underwater.

Monday afternoon I finally had the Sunbaskers exactly as I had envisioned them all along ... spacing was perfect, all arches were shim-free even though they are all grab-n-stack, untooled rocks, and flowers from the Mountain Laurel overhead had fallen on them:
What lucky rocks ...

Can you imagine ... one day you're in the cold depths of the River and the next you are not only in an arch, in the sun and off the ground, but flowers fall off trees and sit on your shoulder. See why rocks love me? Word gets around.

Monday evening I just had to go out to Bent Creek one last time and I had a few hours before fireworks, so I drove the 19 miles for the fifth time over that three-day weekend. Mostly I just walked around and thunk, but I did do this LonelyArch:
Sad over there all by himself ...

It's on Beaten Branch, near where it flows into Bent Creek. BTW, I looked up the name of this little branch on the big map by the side of the road (where the park rangers had a DWI checkpoint on July 2 -- I passed) and it is indeed Beaten Branch.

Tuesday I sent Matt downstream with two innertubes -- one for himself and one to float a shelf-rock down to Rob's for me. While he floated downstream, I gathered some archables and after taking Josh to Tae Kwon Do, I picked up the rock and Matt at Rob's and we went over to Bob-n-Barb Galloway's house and did this for them: 

in time to pick Josh up from TKD. Bob-n-Barb have a dog whose tail concerns me. Rocks C and D on the right concern me as well. The black rock (shelf) is the one Matt floated.

Later that evening I stacked two more of these: , but Phyllis Stein knocked them over.

Yesterday I went to Bent Creek and my sister-in-law Dorle and her friends Joseph and Thomas came for a visit. With a little help, Thomas got this arch to stand:
Cute little wet guy, aye?

I did three more UnderWaterArchesAcrosstheCreek:    and felt that the Bent Creek Sculpture Walk  was complete. Too bad Cindy is coming. As I left later, I heard some pieces of driftwood discussing weather and one said to another, "Look on the bright side. We're bowling for arches tomorrow."

I went back after work today after the rains had stopped and found that all the UnderWaterArchesAcrosstheCreek were down, two of the arches in Meditations on Thominator were down, and the Serpent had fallen. I fixed the Serpent back, but it took so long I didn't have time to fix anything else. It was a good weekend. I love mania.