The Avant Garden

All the other kids are doing it.

Video courtesy Joe Peery

especially lately, as Winter's weather has visited itself upon us. The Avant Garden has its first seasonal exhibit, open and accessible only in Autumn and Winter. The Monks, as they were known last year, are back in line up the hill:
Not a great photo, but shot from ground level ...

This is a personal favorite:
Rob's yard has some cool outcroppings to buildupon ... 

There are 14 of them, I think. The stack at the top is their destination, though I do not know what it is and what it represents, if anything. It might just be that this particular arrangement is the thing I like to do:
The Rock A on the right is a miracle ...

 Most of last week it rained and I sewed, though I do not have any photos to show. This is a gardening blog, so no sewing talk. It's a good counter-hobby, as in back-restoring, to rocks.

My friend D-U-G came up from Atlanta (actually, he lives in Woodstock) to spend the weekend and we went out for some fun in the sun on Saturday. First we went to his property up in Madison County, a nice view lot (7 acres) with gorgeous white stone about. I played around some; here are two very different photos of the results:
The light in the meadow (with berries) version
The silhouette version ...

I added two sidekicks to keep the big  one company.

We went down to the French Broad River to hang out a bit, and on to the Mountains to the Sea Trail near my house where I did this in a rockpile of note off of Ox Creek Road:
Quite precarious, it is ... 

 One of the rocks I picked up at the French Broad was a 90 degree thing like a rock I balance at Rob's on occasion, so I took it over there and did this:
I'm on the lookout for these right-angle rocks now ...

Here's a shot from the other side of it:

It just doesn't look possible, aye?      

If I don't talk to ya between now and then, have an asskickin' Thanksgivin'. I am sure I will find some time for rocks in between rounds of homecookin'.

and to celebrate, I built an arch-on-pedestal for it to perchupon:
They gathered like little sparrows ...

When I returned from getting  my camera, two yellowish stones had alit on the arch as if to bask in the glow of the Hellstone. I was amazed, though I should not have been. I have seen rocks do some strange things in WNC's bizarre gravity fields.

I also fixed up the Land of the Giants: 
Wish I had the rocks to make 1,000 of these in an acre ...

I've had a small culinary herb garden in the front yard since about two days after we moved into this house. To make it a little more interesting, a few years ago I installed a stack or three. My neighbor across the street expressed an affinity for the number three on religious grounds, and since she sees this spot more than I do, I try to keep a trio of things standing in the herb garden. I think I have mentioned before that it's  where the Avant Garden meets middle-class suburbanite yawn-yawn-snore-snore. Anyway, I installed the TrinityTrio and someone came along and put sunglasses on one of the stacks:

 Is that sacrilegious? I dunno.

Winter is really here, and cold is everywhere one turns. It's early Sunday morning and I think I am heading out to Bent Creek to see what my stones have been up (or down) to out there. It's chilly enough for icicles to hang from things. Off to get wooled, I am.      

Most of my time lately has been spent on things other than rocks, but I managed to squeeze in a decent construction today. Early Sunday morning I went to the Nature Center rock pile and did the biggest arch in the Avant Garden's almost two-year history.  I was very proud. So proud, in fact, that I overconfidently decided that it was sturdy enough to add another level before I took a photo. It wasn't. It fell and I left in disgust. Monday I had a spare moment and restacked it, but it was not as nice as before. So today I went back and knocked the ugly one down and moved one of the Rocks A (the ones that touch the ground) out another six inches to make the biggest arch I've ever made bigger: 

Not pretty, but big and close to home ..

, I put the Hellstone back in the Arch on Pedestal  

after dark:

Rob said it made the neighbors slow down for a look ...

I drove by and took a look -- it was pretty cool. If I were a gasbag, I would babble on about the paradox of a stack of the oldest things on Earth (rocks) and the latest halogen/rechargeable battery technology meeting in a River. But I won't mention it.