The Avant Garden

have kept me from blogging lately, but I have not given up rocks yet. I have invested a good bit of time over the past weeks working on this new place -- I call it "The Expansion Garden" -- by the River to stack and/or hang out. It's very private, though weedy. Oriental bittersweet (a nasty tree-devouring vine) is rampant. It's a rather boring affair, so I have not taken any pictures or taken time to blog about weeds. This Serpent (named "Graser") is the first construction in The Expansion Garden:
A hump and positive vibes each for Tom, Mary and Lucy ...

Graser is a rebuild of this Serpent I built on Saturday at my in-laws' house in Blowing Rock, N.C.:
Built Saturday, photographed Sunday ...

They have traveled a good bit and rocks follow him home -- just like me! Most of the rocks in the Serpent are from Quebec, smuggled back in the confines of their camper. I've lusted for them in his garden for several years, and now that he is moving (about 20 minutes W of us), I switched out some granite from the front ditch for some nice white rocks from Quebec and a few from New Zealand as well.

A coupla weeks ago I went to the best rockpile in WNC -- Skinny Dip Falls at Milepost 417 of the BluRP. Due to poor planning on my part, I only took a zoom lense and could not back far away enough from anything to take a decent photo, but the Falls were spectacular and the rocks beautiful and grippy. Here is one of the crappy photos of the eight arches I built:
Water temp was probably ... 46F? Skinny dipping?

This was a fun group of constructions: 
Rocks, water and gravity make for a good day ...

Sunday the 19th  I devoted pretty much exclusively to this miniature Avant Garden:
Perhaps the best part is that if they fall, it does not hurt ...

I can't shake this bronchitis thing and have had headaches, fevers and chills all week. The rocks helped me out by giving me an extra weight discount. Some of them lightened themselves up to 72 percent to be a part of my fantasy world. That was the case on Thursday, when my head pounded as I wheezed my way through a 3-2-1 arch, a rebuild in the back yard Avant Garden:
This is the one I call "Headache I" ...

It took three hours.

Friday, when I went to the the Gashes Pond Rockpile to play to find that everything I had up had been knocked down (by someone with small feet walking a dog, judging from the prints), so I had to rebuild, of course. I started with this arch-on-a-pedestal:
I fixed this one in the foreground up; the other one is down ...

and then built another 3-2-1 arch construction that I called Headache II:
Hard to see, but six arches with four rocks on the ground ... 

Early Saturday morning I went to Gashes Pond again and decided to build back the downed arch -- bigger, of course:
Big, but pretty squat ...

That is no doubt the biggest -- in terms of distance between Rocks A (the ones on the ground) -- I have ever built alone. I used some driftwood to cheat a bit.

After that I went to downtown Asheville to a rally/protest thing about gay people, something the City of Asheville and the counties surrounding it put themselves through about every six to eight years. This guy in this kilt:
Probably won't get the tattoo, though ... nice guy.

looked so comfortable I have decided I want a Utilikilt. Will ask for one for my birthday. I think it'd be just the thing to wear around the rockpile.

Sunday I finally built a Serpent on the big rock across the River, a project I have been eyeing for a year now:
Looks tiny up there, aye?

All the rocks had to be taken across the River and tossed up to the top of that big one. I made a rock ferry of an inner tube and a plastic snow lid and floated them over. Rob came over and put on his waders and helped me out. It took the entire day. I had to make a material run, and I was moving slow. Here's a closer photo:
Still a work in progress ... new head? Brighter tail?

Today I had to work-work late and only had a little time to play, so I drove up the BluRP to the Gap where I did this back in January: 
A place where you stack in clouds sometimes ...

to find most of it down but inhabited by cute little rockstacks someone else had built. I added two more arches:
That's a pretty cool rockpile ...

Hopefully this week will be a better one in terms of how I feel. I get better every day. I'll be dancing in a few days. Badly, but dancing.

the kind of weather that keeps you thinking we are in for at least one more round of Winter. "Blizzard of '93 came end o' March" is a common retort every time one mentions Spring around here. On Wednesday, I went over to Gashes Pond by the Nature Center expecting to find the big arch down, but it was not, so I had to build another one. A bigger one, of course:
No measuring tapes were harmed in construction of this arch ...

I measured the old one and broke a stick four inches longer and then built it bigger than that. It's the biggest one I have ever built, I think.

On Thursday I put the waders on and crossed over the River to repair the Migrating Arches that run up from the bottom of the River to connect with the buy guy on the mountainside:
Rocks like to sunbathe, too ...

This is my favorite part of the construction:
I know what you're thinking, but no one else has one.

On Friday we drove down to Atlanta to visit my folks. Saturday morning I spent with my friend D-U-G in his blacksmith shop, heating up metal and banging the heck out of it. I made a few little trinkets, like hanging basket hooks, but took no photos for some reason. I didn't touch a rock until Sunday morning, when I went over to a new subdivision near mom-n-dad's and did these guys:
Nice fresh rocks, aye? 
Georgia Red Clay is unlike any other muck in the world ...

That red mud on that rock is none other than Georgia red clay, one of the slimiest, stickiest substances ever, known to ruin more kid's clothing than time and catsup combined. Georgia is a thick layer of the stuff. And as if that were not red enough, I went across the road and added to some things that have stood since Thanksgiving:
It looked better live and in person ...

After that, it was time to head back to Asheville and succumb to some sort of flu-like malady that has left me on the sofa while the sun shines outside. I have been to work-work for a few hours here and there, but have not touched a rock or anything since Sunday morning. Starting to feel strange.

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.