The Avant Garden

... but look at this tough guy and his not-so-tough compatriot:
Those who died salute you ...

He has a debris mustache to be proud of. He was allaway underwater, as were almost all (if not all) of the 14 arches in the line of sunbaskers. Five of them remained standing after Tuesday's flood, most of them with debris to show for it. I rebuilt the upstream three yesterday:
Setting 'em up for Ol' Man River again ...

While working on the other side, I suffered the moment every developer dreads -- artifacts:
Is there a whole Conestoga in here? 

Last December while on a family outing we came across the metal rim of a wagon wheel in the River downstream about a mile. Yesterday I found the matching hub, right in the way of one of my arches, so all construction had to come to a complete halt. One arch remains down while a decision is made on what happens next. I think I am going to dig it out tonight and fill the hole with rock and sand and build the arch back so that all 14 are standing and the magic is back and the energy reconnected. I felt like a carney repairing a ride while I repaired the piece.

... in Bent Creek this time. I took the fambly out for some fun-n-sun, though it ended up more like rain-n-pain, as it poured and Anne was stung by a bee. Stealthily hiking downstream, we came across another Stone Serpent arching up from the depths of the Creek:
More rare than the ivory billed woodpecker ...

After the rains, a heavy mist began hovering above the Creek and I snapped one last photo:
I believe it's another female ...

I'm pretty fond of this one.

Monday when I built the second UnderWaterArch (which was down, BTW), I left in a hurry because I had a sudden pang of guilt for leaving the kids at home all day alone. So I changed clothes and left, leaving my hat (the old dirty one, not my new Tilley) hanging on a branch. Very unDavelike, I know. I may be a loser, but I am not a loser in that I lose things (other than hair, but there's not a lot I can do about that). Wallet, keys, wedding ring, etc. stay with me somehow, and usually "hat" is in that list, as one would expect from a balding guy. I'd searched the house and car twice or more for that old hat, and the only place I could imagine it would be was Bent Creek. And it was, though it was no longer hanging up. It was down in the dirt, full of pebbles and sand and never again to be white. It more closely resembles my soul now, I reckon.

I mentioned last week that this was one of my favorite things standing at the mo: . It's down. Bent Creek was hit with some really intense rains and high water washed away all evidence of crazed-rockstacker visits. I will rebuild Old Yeller, as I had come to know him.

... of everything I had stacked in the River. We had a freak thunderstorm that has the mighty Swannanoa  roiling brown and high. This guy on the left:   did a great job of hanging in there. I noticed the companion piece was down on my way to work this morning, but thought the big guy would make it. The water rose higher and Rob took this photo right before it fell this morning about 09:30.

After work-work today, I drove on out to Bent Creek to see if Sunday morning's UnderWaterArch:  was still standing. It was not, so I rebuilt it: . It still has a tip of its keystone sticking out of the water, and it makes for some interesting swirls in the current. And the cool thing is, it does it 24/7, even when we aren't there.

I think I will make a stone serpent in Bent Creek so that as the level of the Creek fluctuates, it will appear to emerge or submerge. Or build one on the Moon. That's what I really want. It doesn't rain on the Moon.

by the committee in charge of such things. If nothing else, we did some cleaning around the house that needed doing. I put two hours into cleaning up the downstairs area that I use as my office.

D-U-G and Joe arrived Friday afternoon. Saturday, I did all the last minute thing I had to do for the party, starting with an 07:00 trip to Wal-Mart. Joe and I went down to Rob's to fix a few things and since the flood replaced a stack I'd done with a tree trunk, I felt obligated to let it play, too:
Showing off for partygoers ...

The funky archery on the right is courtesy of Joe Peery.

The companion piece:  I built for Rob's Lantern-that-isn't-a-lantern fell in the high water, so I went to fix him, but he was gone. Way gone. So gone I couldn't find him. So Joe kept fishing out rocks and I kept stacking them until we had this:
Are we tired of this trick yet?

Later Rob e-mailed me a photograph of both of them together:
Is this act old now?

Then we went to the River behind my house and did one more thing on the big rock; sort of extending the energy from the Birthday Leaner down into the River:
We had to hurry on this one ...

Thom's party went pretty well. Not as many people showed up as I had hoped, but it also didn't turn out to be the nightmare I had feared, either.

Remember this from last week, "If it ever stops raining, I am going to stain the decks of the house and do the underwater arch, though not necessarily in that order." Well, don't tell my wife, but today I did the underwaterarch:
It seemed too easy....

Joe and I went to Bent Creek and I told him about the UnderWaterArch and we decided try it, but when we got there, he decided the water was too cold, so I did it. It began pouring rain, so wet was  everywhere. The arch was surprisingly easy. I'd not estimated the bouyancy of water, and how much lighter rocks are underwater. So naturally I started thinking about stacking on the rocks on the Moon. That's my new goal.

... it has been real flat earth around the Avant Garden lately as I prepare for Thom Smith's g'bye party. I've been using things that make lots of noise (lawnmower, leafblower) lately. Yuck.

Remember this mound of pebbles and swarm of fish:

I sent the photo off to Phillip Gibson, French Broad RiverKeeper, and he sent it on to Powell Wheeler of the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission  and Mr. Wheeler sent the following response: