The Avant Garden

This 18-stoner:
Rest in peace, and in pieces.

fell due to high water and gravity. Yesterday was our first day of summer (heat-wise) so I hopped in the River to fix it. Things went  well; the rocks knew their places and gravity remained constant and compliant. The resulting stack now has 20 stones:
Placing that last one (or two) was a bit scary, but I had my vamoosin' shoes on.

 A 'score' of stones, as Rob pointed out. It measures 87 inches tall, which is 7', 3" to you and me. When I was a kid, I played games like walking back and forth across a tree over the River until I fell in. I hope the trend with this stack isn't to keep building it higher and higher until I get hurt. Pain brings me down. It hurts, too.

 Also yesterday, Nancy Williams, my friend and one of the local columnists I handle at work-work, brought over a New Zealand license plate so I could finish the "My Life as told by License Plates" piece in the back yard:

 I was born and raised in and around Atlanta, Georgia. The Avant Spouse
and I moved to San Mateo, California in 1989 (just in time for the Loma Prieta Earthquake). In 1994, we packed it all up and moved to Hamilton, New Zealand. In 1998, we were sentenced to nine months in Connecticut (there is no avantness in CT -- it's more sterile than  a heart surgeon's hands). We moved to Asheville in 1999 and love it. In a sense, it was a homecoming. George Russell, the Scots-Irish immigrant who brought my clan of the Russell family to the Colonies, settled in these mountains and had his house about 20 miles south of Asheville burned by that British bastard Ferguson. George got his revenge at King's Mountain, though.

Remember this thing:

That's the world's first solar-powered skirt modeled by one of the most beautiful young ladies in Asheville, my friend Erin (yes, she has a boyfriend, and no, you can't have her phone number). To the right, she is modeling it in the light, and ya know? That's not a bad-looking skirt. I'd wear it if it weren't for these darn hips.

Down here is the same skirt, but in the dark:  

The in-the-dark shot.

Sewn inside is a string of red solar-powered Christmas lights. I don't know why Erin looks like she is being punished in the in-the-dark pic, but I never asked. Anyway, after I made the red one, I decided to make another just to reassure myself that its successful completion was not a fluke. The result of that effort was this blue one:

modeled by the cute-beyond-cute Carol, another friend from work-work (no, she doesn't have a boyfriend and no, you can't have her phone number). I have no in-the-dark photo of that one, but it has gold lights inside. Again, I think it looks nice in the light and like no-one-else-has-one in the dark, and no-one-else-has-one is about as cool as it gets. 

So these garments have been sprawled lazily across the guestroom futon for a coupla months, moving only when I have outta town company or show them off to visitors. I think it is time for them to move on to new owners, but that's a bit of a problem. I adore these things. I poured an entire weekend into the red one and spent a whole series of weeknights on the blue one, blissfully migraining over each little detail and decision. 

I want something special to happen to them and for them to have a useful, exciting future ( same for Erin and Carol).

 Some ideas:

1) Give them to the aforementioned young ladies who modeled them and seemed to like them (though I'd give the blue one to Erin -- she's taller -- and the red to Carol).

2 ) Sell them at cost. I'd like to purchase materials to make a few more -- bigger, brighter and better. A different pair of nice young ladies visited the Avant Garden over the weekend from Baltimore (Carol's friends Anika and Karla, just as sweet and cute and wonderful as Carol) and seemed to like them enough.  "That's so Asheville," one of them said. The solar skirts would at least be worn and who knows? Perhaps I will see them again.

3) Donate them to Quality Forward for them to auction? QF is a great bunch and I have discussed the idea with Susan Roderick, the executive director, but she seems dubious and I think she'd rather I donate a rockstack or something. I can probably find a rockstack, too.

4) Someone apparently more enthralled with the things than even I am suggested I take them to some of the dress shops in town or someplace they sell things on consignment and see what I can get for them. I think I'd be laughed outta town and all the way down to Short Coxe Avenue if I tried to take them to a real womens' clothing store.

 5) Sell them on E-Bay. I've never sold anything on E-Bay before, and don't know how solar-powered-skirts would list. And they'd be outta my life forever, far away from their home in Asheville.

5) Other ideas, anyone? 

On another topic, we had a bit of rain and the River turned to a deeper brown and rose slightly.  Rob forwarded this pic of the two arches-on-pedestals in the River behind his house:
Rob is impressed with the delta touch of the shorter one.

That short guy was a real heel to stack. I almost gave up, but the triangular pedestal kept insisting it was worth it.

Rob also sent a movie, but someone smarter than I (where are my teenagers?) will have to figure out how to convert the file from AVI to whatever YouTube likes. I don't know much about that part of the rockstacking trade. I just stack 'em high.

This one is in the in the adult stage, no doubt using those big red eyes to try and find some of the

Scary red eyes, aye? good stuff -- and I don't mean food. In this stage, they fly around whirring until they find a partner, and once they mate, he falls over dead. She drops a load of eggs into a tree branch and 6-8 weeks later they hatch and fall to the ground and eat on roots, kinda maggot-like. Then they sleep for 17 years. I stole that from here: http://www.pbase.com/knight_errant/cicada_central

 Speaking of procreation and all that, my baby brother (Donald, 32) and his wife (Kara) had a baby this evening. Mary Allison Russell came into this world weighing 7 pounds, 12 ounces. Mary probably is looking for some food.

The 17-year Cicadas are a-whirring in the background of the Avant Garden today, mingling with the usual suburban sounds of weedwhackers and barking dogs. I found the first Cicadas in the Avant Garden today -- on a Dogwood(!) tree. You can see where he/she/it nymph crawled out of this exoskeleton, leaving that crack in the middle section.

We noted the same phenomenon when we lived in New Zealand. There are annual Cicadas there and when we took the kids to the park, there would be so many they would crunch under our jandals. Two-year-old K-T and I once made roads in the sand and using Cicada bodies as cars, we had tremendous crashes that she thot very funny -- especially when the driver of my Cicada would cuss at the driver of her Cicada.

I went o'er to Rob's house today and with the River so low, I noticed some rocks I have played with previously but had lost, so I put them to use making this little fella:

Sturdier than it looks, it is ...
While bumbling about in the water, I picked up a rock with another rock attached to it in some strange way:

It's not some sort of crab or mussel -- it's stone. It's like that little one is glued to the larger one. Rob and I had never seen anything like it. Rust and pressure and time are the only things I can think of. Rob suggested FixiDent. I took one more photo of the new arch-on-pedestal with the one that is always there -- Rob's Arch:
"Separated at Birth," Rob says.

 It's a three-day weekend and all the people who were going to come visit me cancelled, so I have 72 hours with no specific plans. I hope something strange this way comes. I'd bet on it.