The Avant Garden

... but I have managed to get my licks in. I spent a coupla days cleaning up and getting the Avant Garden looking like a park again. Rob came over and helped on Friday, which I thought was quite nice of him. Saturday morning, I finally got around to doing the vacation arch:

The Rocks A hail from North Carolina, as we started and ended our trip in North Carolina. I picked up one archable at all our stops -- even from a drainage ditch on the Las Vegas Strip -- to make a long-term souvenir of family vacation '05.

Then I went back to the back yard Avant Garden and made this two-arches-sharing-keystone-on-a-pedestal:

  Also on Saturday morning, we had a neighborhood trash cleanup thing, and apparently some of the neighbors thought my rocks in the River were trash, too, and knocked them over. Rob said it was bears that did it. I felt pretty sure it was humans. Rob and I went for a ride in his truck and when we came back, there was a bear in his back yard. But, the rocks were stacked in three different places about a half-mile apart, some were knocked to my side of the River, some to Rob's side. God forgives vandals. I do not. I immediately rebuilt this one:

because it is on Rob's property. His deed says his property line is the middle of the River, and this is on his side. I can't imagine the grumpy old men in my neighborhood making it down there, though.

Sunday morning I went to Bent Creek to find that the Original Bent Serpent (OBS, as we call him around the rockpile) had a broken arch so I fixed him up. Everything else was fine.

One day last week, I found this rare Native American carving on our property:  Actually, I carved that myself. It's a kokopelli, which I have sort of adopted as my symbol. I'm kokopelli-like in some ways. Fatter, though.

... sorry about that. I went to UpperBent Sunday morning with more coffee than I could drink and got back to work, though slowly. It was so chilly that I considered leaving and coming back in the afternoon, but the price of gas made that impractical, so in I jumped. First I fixed these three:

and things kept going pretty well until I had this: 

and things just kept falling into place to the point that I had seven arches on that side . I added these three on the other side of the island: 

so that all the surface water flowing down Bent Creek had to go under one of my arches. I love that spot and will definitely go back this weekend.

Joe e-mailed me a photo of all four of the arches I did in his back yard over Labor Day weekend: . Back when gas was $1 a gallon, our friend D-U-G made himself a kitchen table with a matching set of metal chairs, each one featuring a member of the Simpson family. You can see Bart through this arch on pedestal:

This is the new thing to play with behind the house:

Yesterday I spent a long time down in the River behind Rob's and the magic never came and everything I tried failed, so I left some flat-earth stuff there to make the neighbors happy. I will go back tomorrow if possible. You gotta git right back on that horse.

Remember this:  "I'm getting bored with all my usual haunts. I need to branch out and find a new place with new material. Any suggestions?" from last post? I hiked up Bent Creek a ways today to a place I'd seen from the road and considered before, and with the Creek down a good bit, a previously-hidden shelf of good material was revealed. I did this:
So simple, yet so exciting ... well, to me, anyway ... 

and accidentally knocked it down while trying to add to it. I'd planned on spanning the entire Creek here with arches -- there's that much material here when the water level is down. This is the "new place." Working title is "UpperBent." It's kinda visible from the road, though.

I went to the neighborhood picnic this afternoon and discussed my rocks with many of my neighbors. Everyone there loved them and wants to see more. Several people mentioned they loved looking down there and seeing what the high waters were taking down when we had the last rain. 

This evening I went over to Rob's. He was away, but I went on and manipulated some of his rocks anyway. One cool thing we did this week was make a movie. I lay (yes, that's correct usage) down in the bed of Rob's Taliban-tough Toyota Truck and held his little camera off the end of the tailgate and we cruised by the arches. The accompanying muffler and brake noise add to the experience. Send me an e-mail and I will send you the video.

I spent a good bit of time playing with my camera this week, like this self-portrait:
I'm the one in the white hat ...

using my old tripod from 20 years ago. Also took this nice shot of Meditations on Thominator:
I'm fonda this one ...

Anyway, I did this in the River downstream from Rob's house this evening:
This one is way outta sight of the madding crowd ...

It's a classic spot -- former home of TenDollarStack -- that has sat dormant for a long time, so I was happy to get it fixed again. It's not visible from anywhere except the Browers' back yard. I spent over an hour and endured three meltdowns before this one fell into place. After that, I was too tired to do anything but come home and blog. Tomorrow is another day and I will head off to Bent Creek early in the morning.

... made for a good weekend. I went ahead and bought some more memory so I could carry on. I probably got some other features that I do not know how to use as well. Saturday morning I did indeed go to Bent Creek, though not too early -- it was 54F when I rolled outta bed. I took more coffee than I could consume and found everything standing just fine except for Independence Circle: , upon whom I spent the next hour working on only to get to this: I was going for that 'visit from angels' shot ...

which I decided wasn't good enough, so I knocked it over and gave it another back-breaking, fruitless half-hour. I decided to give it a rest and see what else was going on. The Original Bent Serpent:  was fine, though he looks a lot different now. He is completely high and dry, poor fella. I fixed the Jilted Serpent:
Still hanging around ...

but left the Independence Circle just a pile of rubble.

I did some flat-earth gardening stuff and went down to the River to complete this row of arches:
Can you find the rocks that just don't belong?

I took some archables from the yard -- known quantities, so to speak -- to help because I'd used up all the local archable stuff. In the Winter we'll be able to see these from the deck. 

Sunday morning I determinedly drove back to Bent Creek. I had another thermos of coffee and my boots on,  prepared to wrestle gravity as long as it took to fix Independence Circle. Much to my surprise, he suddenly cooperated and fell into place:
Born on the Fourth of July, rebuilt twice ... 

first drop of the keystone. This is the best rendition of this piece yet, I think. So I came on home to play in the River.

The River features many of these splits in the bedrock that form little valleys and everytime I look at one I hear it calling out for an arch, so today I finally heeded the call:
Will do this again, I bet ...

There's another of those down behind Rob's that needs filling.

Today I rec'd an e-mail about my friend Jonathan, who is ailing, so I did a stack called Tall John Short:
Big rocks but small arch ...

I hope he gets well. His light shines brightly in this world.

I'm getting bored with all my usual haunts. I need to branch out and find a new place with new material. Any suggestions?

Every time I want to add to the blog, I have to delete something. I am outta space. I could buy more memory, but what happens when I use that bit up? I buy more? Where does it stop? It's a bummer to take them down, but I still have all the photos stored on my computer and backed up on an external hard-drive thing.  

Anyway, I spent a good bit of the week across the River at Rob's house. They even fed me Thursday night. I am 29(?) arches out of a probable 33 Marchin' Arches up the hill beside Rob's driveway:
Tough thing to photograph ...

It has been one black widow  spider per rock to build that thing. I'm not fond of them, but I am used to them. When I was a kid, it was a guarantee that there would be one black widow under each of my grandfather's watermelons, and he planted acres.

This evening I added a marching arch or two more and then repaired the arch-on-a-pedestal I did there back in the Spring:
I'm glad he is back ...

The River finally went down enough that I could get the rocks out easily and the folks at the North Fork Reservoir will really have to save up a buncha water to get the level up to knock this one over. But they will. This thing took two drops of the keystone, including a complete meltdown (I was in sandals) at one point.

The sunbasking arches:  number 17 now, as the River recedes and new arches are exposed. There are two of them that have not fallen once since I built them back in May or June. Tomorrow I am up early and off with a big thermos of coffee to Bent Creek. Hope everything is okay, though I know the Jilted Serpent will be down.