The Avant Garden

It's in high gear right now. Birds are fluttering about and frogs are grunting and I have waded in the Swannanoa sans outer layer. Did I mention it was Spring in this hemisphere? I am trying to suck every second out of it, too. 

 After standing for over a year -- the second oldest arch-on-pedestal I had -- Leslie Boyd's Arch on a Pedestal fell over. I heard a rumor her sister Robin was flying in for a visit and timed it so that in a matter of a few hours, she went from New Jersey to helping in the Avant Garden:

Poor bugger has a tough act to follow, for sure

These rocks were stacked with birdpoop already on them. I don't remember the Fuegenaut rating, but it's pretty high ... somewhere 'round nine, I think.

For the first time since WWII, The Asheville Citizen-Times will be Ball-less. Ewart Ball III retired last week.  He is a good friend and photographer who has been nice to me since the day I met him. I went over to his house and did a stack for him and his wife Brenda:
I hope it falls so I can visit EBIII again ...

Rob's Arch #17:
Rob's Arch XII we called it around the rockpile ...

got hammered by a log during one of our Spring (did I mention it was Spring?) rains that saw the River rise a wee bit. I took this photo:
It knocked Rock A about 3 inches downstream, and the rest of it fell upstream ...

the day I went over to build Rob's Arch XVIII. And Rob's Arches have become so commonplace that I didn't even make a photo of XVIII.

I stacked a Mating Pair upstream:
First sighting of the young  season. 

 though it is difficult to translate from afar because they are so close together.

Friday I came home from work-work with that teeth-gritting-ADD feeling that work-work often produces, but this time, everything went well and I was spared the usual accompanying headache and able to stand up the Rock that Rob says looks like the leg lamp in A Christmas Story:

It really needs a lampshade ... new project!

I went on an ADD-directed stacking extravaganza that produced many things, but few worth bragging about. This one is a bit interesting, only because I cannot explain how the Plus sign thing on the upstream end of this rock stands:
Dark and unexaplainable

I've also spent sometime behind the sewing  machine.

This is a capote I made for Janet Shaw,  whom I am fortunate enough to call my neighbor and friend, with Janet actually wrapped up inside it:

A good look for Janet, I think ...

 And I have more wool blankets to sew and more rocks to stack. Sometimes these two obsessions collide in more ways than fighting for the hours in my day. A few weeks ago as I worked with chiffon, a gorgeous sheer material, my fingertips kept snaring and pulling the fabric. Not my nails, not my nail beds, but the skin on my fingertips that those darn rocks keep so rough. I had to get a fingernail file out and file down my fingertips so I could work with the material. The garment I created ended up hanging on the Rack of Shame, but the failure was one of grey matter, not fingertips.

though I fully expect Winter to rear its head at least one more time before riding off into the sunset. The big news around the Avant Garden was a visit from Zach Pine who came to Western North Carolina on some unrelated business and stopped by for an afternoon. We visited Rob and the Avant Garden Proper and went out to dinner with spouses in tow. While at Rob's, Zach showed me how to make a sand ball (he has some dynamite examples on his Web page,so be sure and check it out):
Sadly, the PineBall blew from its perch and met an early demise.

We visited the site of the "Get Well Zach Stack" and did a coupla tall flat-earth stacks. Rob took our picture:
West Coast meets East Coast

When I first started this blog back in 2005, I linked to Zach's Web site because I thought what he did was really interesting and it made me feel like what I wanted to do was perfectly acceptable. To meet him was an honor.

The three things I jokingly refer to as "The Permanent Collection" are enjoying a bit of a resurgence in popularity, as height seems to be the "in" thing around the rockpile these days:
They need guitars or something ....

The River temp has risen to 53F and I have been playing ... still in waders, of course, but if this warming trend continues, I could see me baring my s0-white-they're-almost-pink legs.

Out in the herb garden, "Where the Avant Garden meets middle-class-suburbanite-yawn-yawn-snore-snore," as they say, Trice Ward, who lives across the road from me, made an addition to my little arch-on-pedestal:

I think it is way-cool. My neighbor is quite accomplished.

I thought it was the coolest thing I had seen in two weeks. But Trice is like that. 

Don't I poo-poo "cutesy" things? One of my favorite neighbors, Lettie, brought her sister for a walk through the Avant Garden Proper and she was so sweet when she said she "really liked that turtle that I did," so I did another one, this time actually trying to make something that looks like a turtle:
Requests taken from grandmothers only, please ...

 It was like a request from my very own grandma, and I did it with pleasure.

Winter is indeed making a comeback; the River rose and knocked over Rob's Arch and a few others, but Turtle was still bravely standing when I came back from work-work. I listened to Ween while stacking it. I think that had something to do with its sturdiness.