The Avant Garden

... leaves me tired, itchy and sore without a column idea. I may have to reach into the old bag and recycle something.

I spent a good bit of Friday and Saturday playing down on a sandy bar on the River:
Given Asheville real estate, that muck is worth thousands ...

The project I can feel is a line of arches, as the rocks in the depths of the River formed into arches and slinkied up for a moment in the sun. They go up outta the stream, but as soon as the bank gets too steep, they have to slinky back into the River. Their trail does a 90 degree turn, as they suddenly lost momentum and were pushed  back into the River. I've done 4 arches of the approximate 12 it will take. The bucket method has been working well for me, which is good because I knocked down one of the arches three times.

Here's a free lesson for beginners: Don't get so excited about Project B that you trample Project A.

My Sunday morning drive found me atop the viewing tower at Mt. Mitchell:
In the very center is the Swannanoa Valley, where I live

It's the highest point east of the Mississippi River; about 30 miles away.

This morning I went back to Rob's section of the River and played:

I had to do these with one hand, as it was still coffee-time

My favorite:
Still up last time I checked ...

I shan't dwell on what a busy week I am looking at, but it will be tough enough to find time to play, much less play, photograph and blog, but I will try.

I've found where I want to build the underwater arch. It's in a place where the water swirls around in an eddy. Arches are somewhat two-dimensional  -- you can either go one way of the other -- so having swirling water that will interact with the arch without thought of going any one way or the other is quite exciting. To me, anyway.

... but I promise to do better than once a week from now on. We went to Atlanta over the weekend to see family and so on, and about the only avant gardening I could squeeze in was this walking line of sticks in Joe's back yard:
Forty One Tripods on their way to Hell ...

This was a project I started at about 23:30 (that's 11:30 p.m. to you and me) Saturday night and photographed Sunday morning. The thinking was (well, my thinking, anyway) that if an alien spaceship landed and asked what we were doing, we would say, "We trained the pile of sticks to form tripods and walk into the firepit and burn." 
Two sticks of the last tripod burned; one leans against the gate of Hell ...

And then they would fly away believing it because all available evidence supported that statement. For about five minutes, while the sticks of the last tripod to make it burned, anyway. Monday I was a single dad and wrote the weakly Dave column, Tuesday I worked on the No One Else Has One Garden, of which I am very proud but unable to show off in photographs. Ya have to come see it. And it still isn't completed. Yesterday I did flat earth gardening stuff like eating weeds and blaaaahed the day away. Today I did the first River stacks of the season, though these are more balances than stacks, I reckon:
Lots more to come, I promise ...

I went over to see Rob Quayle, who is freshly back from Alaska. He went feeling under the weather and came back and caught a cold right away. Poor bugger hasn't had a Spring. These rocks are behind his house, though I photographed them from my side of the River. If Rob can put up with me, I think I will work there a lot this summer.

Today in the River I found three of these mounds of stones that were smaller than the stones in the area immediately around them:
Maybe the aliens landed here ...

They were all piled up in a mound, and then down by Rob's I saw one that had been built and then destroyed, like scooped open or something. Now that I am over my fear of snakes, sorta, I was dealing with my fear of the vicious Oteenian River Monster pretty well until I saw those things. I think they are egg pods for them.

... that I've written two columns condemning them and here I am 'roiding! I have a prescription and have followed my doctor's orders, and after a Thursday wasted on the sofa, I avant-gardened and even danced the afternoon away today. I have a slight exertion headache, but it's a pleasant one. Actually, the headache would probably go away if I could turn this damn music down. Tuesday I went to the kids' band concert at school and sat (mostly) still in a stuffy school auditorium for over an hour. Wednesday I went to Bent Creek and did this independently-balanced totem in the bald:
Simple-minded, but sees more stars than most ....

I took it down and put the rocks back when finished. Good boy.

I don't care what anyone says -- I like Flogging Molly. "Drunken Lullabies" will most likely be my favorite song for the next 10 minutes or so.

Wednesday afternoon I waded out in the River and repaired the arch on this rock for about the tenth time:
Phyllis Stein didn't let this one live long ...

One of my neighbors drove by while I was working on it and honked and gave me a thumbs up, the reaction I get from 90 percent of my neighbors. Another 9 percent don't give a damn. Three hours later, the arch was down because the remaining 1 percent vandalized it. Phyllis Stein strikes again.

This is from the book "Listening for the crack of dawn," by Appalachian storyteller Donald Davis, written about a favorite teacher:

"It was important to her to correct the way Mr. Thoreau had been often misquoted as blessing those who 'march to the beat of a different drummer.'
'That's not what he said at all. That implies that we all hear the different drummer, but only a few choose to march to the sound. What he does say is that it is only the rare few who ever hear the different drummer, and once they have heard, they cannot keep from following.'"

Sometimes I feel I am really lucky to hear that drummer; other times it is a curse.

I did this:
That's the new rockmobile to the right there ...  

at some point recently, but do not remember when exactly. It was within the week but before the poison ivy attack. And this one has been a vicious, brutal attack.

But I'm not complaining.

Like it says on the family shield from the old country: If you're gonna be dumb, ya gotta be tough.

... it must be summertime. I have poison ivy in my eyes and stuff. I look like a prize fighter who lost badly. I feel like a prize fighter who lost really, really badly. I'm on steroids, but do not feel like scratching my crotch and spitting. I've been mostly working around the house lately. The No-One-Else-Has-One garden is looking good now:
I've not seen one like it in this county ... or the next

I have to go back to bed now. I feel awful. I'll be back soon.

... in the way of avant gardening. Monday I had to write the weekly Dave column, which was about gardening, so if you have a mo, check it out. It brought a lot of response from gardening types. Wednesday was Anne's birthday. Her sister Chris came down from Richmond and while we were waiting on festivities, we went down to the River and she watched-n-snapped photos as I stacked rocks:
Just in case you thought someone else did this stuff...

I had to do this or else this rock would fall over on the other. It took three keystone drops ...The rock against which that arch is propped dropped down the bank about 6 feet down into the River during the Sept. floods. 

Yesterday I went back to Bent Creek to get my ya-yas out and did this arch in the middle of the creek:
The reflection is actually its 'art' ...

While I was doing it I decided I must do an arch completely under water. That will be an interesting undertaking.

I had a picnic at the RootballGarden:
Probably my favorite thing I have going now ...

Tomorrow and Sunday I am a single parent, so will probably stick close to home. But I will probably do something worth photographing. I've been drawn by the mediocre rocks in the River behind my house, which will have to do until Rob Quayle gets back from Alaska and we can play in the River behind his house. I bet Alaska has some good rocks and Rob is stacking his fingers raw.