I give a few words to the pictures, but I also probably shouldn’t need to, at least for some. Beauty is objective.

Here is a sunrise, taken on my way to work one very early morning. Winter’s days are short in the Pacific North West and it often results in dark journeys, early as heck, but with some breath-taking rewards.

(left click any image to enlarge)

My adopted city of Louisville, Kentucky offers some special regional delights, in particular the Springtime views of Dogwoods of all types, mixed so incredibly well with Azaleas and the other local beauties.

The gracious splendor within the confines of the very sobering Cave Hill Cemetery compliments the conservative Southern values which so value history and which combine beauty with the silent respectfulness inherent in this gorgeous ‘final resting place’ of Louisville’s finest.

But Louisville is not necessarily alone in the “Gracious Beauty Sweepstakes”. Having lived in more than one fine city, I hold Portland to be every bit the equal of anywhere on Earth for sheer urban horticultural respect. Speaking merely of Dogwoods, Portland has its very own resources:

Portland offers certain “extremes” in gardening and landscaping. As the home of an incredible number of nurseries and the nation and world’s “grass farms” where seed originates,  it has an otherwise widely-known ‘experimental’ side of social experiments, some of which include gardening.  Portland can surprise one with singular brazen beauties in a simple city block. This Variegated Dogwood – a nearly perfect “freak” that someone grabbed as a sapling at a local nursery and whose development is fascinating as it can be, from it’s earliest Spring look, as blooms and leaves develop together:

To its ultimate “Whiteness” -

I obviously followed this one closely as it unfolded a few Springs ago. I found it really fascinating, this plant stuck in someone’s front yard, a brainstorm of someone’s 15-20 years ago and no doubt a real deal at some nursery at the time. This is a very cool tree.

Here, below, is an otherwise nondescript garden in some Portland neighborhood. Its simple beauty begs for a moment of fame, in my opinion, simply by looking so pretty, delicate and otherwise fresh.

At times, simple spins around a neighborhood can give as big an eye full as one could ever want. Here are various gorgeous layers of various gorgeous plants:

The parks are another hot topic for me. In Portland, there were so many and – it turns out – in Louisville perhaps even more. I have adored the entrance to the Chrystal Springs Rhododendron Garden for years.

Nice, eh?

Near Preston Highway in Louisville is an under-utilized park – site of the Dogwood Festival – which may have the most incredible display of dogwoods it has ever been my pleasure to see:

Louisville has Bernheim Woods, an absolutely gorgeous entry into the incredibility sweeps. Let’s face it, it’s hard to argue with this view of life as we know it…………..

The color above could nearly be described as  ”violently colorful”, it is so rich and lush. The term struck my mind as I took this picture.

And here’s a gratuitous rhododendron picture…….with a rose to follow!

(left click to enlarge images)

From here?………..

We acquired this project from a family who lived by a golf course and who correctly surmised that the sounds of water spilling would be satisfying, yet, in great amounts, loud and obnoxious. As a sound issue water is a most penetrating sound. It can literally “drown out” conversation, if you will. We designed this for the sound and of course, the visual effects, yet pointed it away from the house itself.

We begin. We have placed plywood on the ground, more to protect irrigation parts and to keep the mud and mess to a minumum than anything else. It is time to begin the excavation and we are beginning at the top, as is usually the case on a bank.

We venture downward, excavating our original hole, determining drop areas and depths of retaining ponds. This stage just has us digging the original hole. Later pictures reveal a bit more method as we begin placing the more major boulders, the anchors, at specific points. I typically “anchor” my falls, when possible. The idea is to act like Nature. For example, creeks turn when they meet large immoveable boulders. Likewise for the formation of water features. As in Nature, a sudden dropoff is usually around major, relatively immoveable obstacles and grade changes. This is what I try to reconstruct. At this stage, we excavate first. It does not take long to get at the nuts and bolts. Turns out, digging is the easiest part!

Here, then, is your standard average big old hole in the ground. By any other name, that is what it is for sure. There is however some method to this excavation. As we excavate our way down, we create “falls ledges”, designed spots where the various falls will take place. Notice the anchor rocks by the lower, and final in this case, falls. The liner will not be under these. Their sheer size of the boulders would cause rips in it, a fate to be avoided at all costs. In the end, holes in a liner are a disaster. This particular system we applied concrete to throughout, over the liner, adding an extra measure of security if you will. However, we often use liner only, as Part 5 will illustrate. We often add an underlayment, a fabric under that. The reason? Well, many. One is the softer subsurface adds some padding for any potential objects which could affect the liner, like rocks and feet. Another is that the maddening little critters, both moles and their cousins in “liner crime” the “voles” both enjoy the salty taste of liner. Yes, I swear. We have had liners we traced holes for only to find these teeth marks at the end of small critter tunnels. Turns out, the salts in the rubber are somewhat tasty to the little munchkins. Ugh.

This is actually progress at the same stage as the former picture, yet this is from another angle. One gets a much better idea of the anchor rock idea, noticing those two large rocks that straddle the lower falls. As well, this view allows us to back up and see the strata which is above the bottom pond. It will be another pond, the second in a series of 3.

OK, now we are getting somewhere. We typically lay the aforementioned underlayment beneath the liner pictured here. This liner is an EPDM, 45 mil. liner, which is very tough and quite heavy. We protect our liners as much as humanly possible, because in the end, these sheets of rubber are what holds the water. One is wise to double or triple smaller pieces of liner when placing larger rocks on top of it. This “protection” keeps the contractor from palpitating when someone drops a rock on his precious liner. Repairs are actually easy, if indeed one does discover a hole, or rip in the liner. We use an EPDM glue, much the same as that glue used on bicycle tires. Equally smelly and equally needing to dry first before application. We use alcohol to clean the surface we mend, and rough it up, slightly with sandpaper or our hands. Pressure is needed to hold it in place, which often represents one’s hardest task.

We begin adding cement and the rocks which will form the feature itself. Obviously, I rely heavily on the machine in the picture there. The virtue of these small “mini excavators” is in their “thumb”, the small attachment that squeezes a rock between itself and the bucket and can drop it into place at a distance. Inasmuch as many of the rocks are dense and heavy as heck, the machine is worth it’s weight in gold. “Work smarter, not harder” is heard alot in my trade. The ability to add rocks in place like a jeweller is a good analogy, just on a much larger scale. We are now doing things like providing the “spill rocks” over which the water flows. Great pain is taken to get those that will give the efffects we are after. We were very desrious of having a “sheet effect” on the upper falls, which would also be the tallest and biggest drop. Nearer the bottom, we opted for a more natural, creek effect.

The cementing is primarily finished, rocks in place and the pumps placed. Note, on this water feature we added a “bubble rock” in the bottom pond, thus the need for the additional, smaller pump. The piping and routing of the pipe back up to the source of the running water was achieved during the process of setting the rocks in place and cementing. At this stage, we are ready to actually run the water for the first time. It is always fairly exciting after all the hard work of moving and rassling with big rocks, to see what the heck we were aiming for and how close we came. It usually draws a crowd. I might add that this stage also performs the function of showing us where we might have gone wrong, what requires tweaking and adjusting. Still, this is about the 85% finished mark, any way you slice it.

OK, we are running the thing. We were tweaking some stuff and actually replacing and moving some of the plants surrounding the feature at this juncture. The falls and creeks, the pumps and pipes have all been checked and adjusted appropriately or repaired, it is ready to roll.

Here she is! Planted up, with lights inset beneath the falls and all the bells and whistles. This was a really fun job to do, with not as many snarly tangles as many we have done. The soil was easy to excavate and the homeowner was a great guy who was fascinated by it all and who took many of the pictures I have here. This waterfall did win an award in the state it was contructed.

This assumes that  my target audience have not faced the trials offered by landscaping in climates which feature rainfall on a regular basis. My “target audience” in this case, does not include the unfortunately abundant numbers of those who do live there who are all more than familiar with mud and its close relatives – muck and slime. There are other, more colorful and less mannerly descriptions of these utterly earthly descriptive’s, but I will leave them to the reader’s imagination. These terms all  feature the same wide and imminently hostile variety as are so often used when discussing rain itself – with my same reluctance to use them on an otherwise very consciously “decent” blog. However, in the search for said terms, use all of your imagination, by all means!  ;-)

An incident of note:

This example was early in my career, while working for Cotswold Landscaping in Vancouver, British Columbia, when I was reassigned over to the “Landscaping Division” of the small company where I had previously plied my 3 years worth of working days as a “Maintenance Specialist” – a nice name for someone who weeds gardens and mows grass. I had helped the business devise an estimate –  my very first estimate in landscaping, a contract we were actually awarded. My Hungarian friend, Alex, a giant of a man with limited Math and English skills, had requested help as well as a need for another able hand in the division, inasmuch as we’d lost a guy who had moved back to England. I was open for a change and it became my initial work in a field which would last another 40 years. It was also my first True Mud experience, slightly uncomfortable yet totally appropriate for what transpired as years rolled on.

The contract was for the perimeter of a public building and consisted primarily of establishing plants in the obvious landscaping spots and installing a large lawn to cover a mounded area to the rear which would double as a playground.

I remember being quite excited having successfully intuited and laid out our materials needs and I used Alex’s figures for what we would need concerning labor. I had shopped the plant list, found reasonable soil and compost suppliers and received much praise from the owner for my contribution. I was positively aglow and barely able to contain my enthusiasm for the project.

As we entered the project on that first day, the undertaking looked seriously large and somewhat intimidating. In truth, it was over an acre in size, with the large expanse of grass featured prominently, studded by large shade trees and Ornamental’s at interesting intervals. Inasmuch as we were finishing another project  elsewhere, Alex then left me behind to coordinate some bulldozer work which would have the land slightly reconfigured to meet the parameters expressed on our prints.

The bulldozer arrived on a big flatbed trailer and the operator drove right off the trailer onto the ground around us. He scooted forward, stopped and we began discussing the plan. Once apprised, he immediately cranked ‘r up and we began the job of moving dirt from here to there. Things went swimmingly as we began scraping the top of the earth from the perimeter and relocating it in piles next to the mounded area, which need about a foot of raising. For those who wonder, raising this  large mound by a foot required the resettling of nearly 400 yards of dirt – around 30 truck loads in everyday parlance. In other words – it’s a bunch of dirt.

Here, thanks to a picture provided by Graders.com, is what it looks like at the business end of bull-dozing dirt:

As we worked through the morning, it began coming together. Slowly the dirt accumulated from the scraping, we made some “elevation shots” with our construction level and found that we had arrived at the time for spreading the dirt up onto the mound to complete this phase of the project. As the operator pushed his first load of soil upwards, dropping it in place as he traveled over this overburden, he stopped and called me over, to recollect with me the aim and general parameters we had established. He was waiting for me as well to insert a stick into the ground, the top of which would be the “reveal” which gave the finished grade and which he could work to. I had studded a few of these around the mound in increasingly higher increments and wrapped the tops of the stakes with a brilliant day-glow pink ribbon.

As he sat and I approached, I climbed up onto the pads of his tracks and we began speaking. As we spoke, standing there, I began to feel this crazy sort of vertigo, a creeping sensation that something was happening around me which I could not really lay a mental finger on. We both stopped talking because he felt the same thing. Suddenly, we realized what it was – we were sinking!! – straight down.

“Dammit, we’re sinking!”, he yelled and he quickly started the machine. I hopped off and he tried reversing the ‘dozer but found out he had sunk far enough that all that got accomplished was watching the pads eat into the virtual wall formed by the sinking and going even lower. Moving forward was the same, but worse. He seemed to be diving into the very same trouble, just quicker. As he sat there, his motor idling, we both had the realization that the soil under the crusted layer we were on top of was still extremely “fresh” mud, not yet completely percolated and not firm whatsoever. Not even close.

Here – a different machine type, but a similar result:

He sat in the cabin chair as it slowly sank, inch by slow inch, right in front of our eyes. He even leaped out after the sides of the tracks got covered over with the sliding black ooze emanating as the ‘dozer displaced it, covering over the tracks and showing merely the seat itself protruding out of the ground. Even the blade disappeared. Eventually, it never got completely covered over although the seat was the only remaining artifact from our origins. It sat up out of the mud in the end, like this yellow beacon to a grateful machine owner who did not relish fishing blind for the thing later, when rescue arrived.

We shared a sort of secret smile in a mutually wry understanding of the plain absurdity of it all, and yet, it was nothing he hadn’t seen before. He immediately called his office, a huge excavator was dispatched on the same “low bed” trailer and, within an hour, we were hooked up and pulling the machine out of the brown dirt jello. Once cleared, he hopped in and drove it right out. He spent another hour cleaning it off by hose and we then spoke of the timing for our next effort.

The eventual disposition of wet dirt – otherwise known as “Mud” – is this: The tiny grains which make up soil are any combination of sand, silt and the even finer products which make up “clay”. Organic materials round out the composition of any soil and can often work to slow down the draining of water from it all. Tree roots as well as tiny “thallus” – or “Mycelium” – wide-ranging fungal rooting systems of mushroom roots along with wood particles can take far longer to drain. This soil was extremely organic, having been the floor of a dense forest for 25,000 years or so, complete with under-pushed ferns and the total of the afore-mentioned range of organic materials.

A “cleaner” soil, consisting of clays, sands and silts, or even a sandy loam, will drain well over time. The tinier the particles of any soil, the longer it will take for this to occur. But they all eventually allow the water through and then stand firm for travel. In this case, it took nearly two weeks for it to drain sufficiently for us to spread soil with yet another wonder of technology – the “Swamp Cat” – a bulldozer with 3 foot wide pads, displacing about 2 pounds per square inch. It’s wide platform deterred it from sinking and it’s footprint was so wide, nearly any semi-permanent material would be sufficient, short of literal water.

We wrapped up the project on time and within budget. Our owner was delighted, especially after the incident of our very first day, which no doubt concerned everyone as if it were an omen of some type.

Future incidents of my own personal Mud Men Adventure Series are every bit as unusual as I also discovered cures for problems such as the one presented in this post – cures which allowed us to be incredibly proactive and still successful in a trade rife with the muddy environments such a climate can present.

I found love

In a song and in the dancing   ……….   childlike   ………..    whole

Enthusiastic!

The illuminations of honesty take second place

To nothing in this world

Nothing at all