Steve Snedeker’s Landscaping and Gardening Blog

Fossils!!  Old Ones! These, in fact, are pretty close to the Oldest Ever. Dating from the Devonian Era, back about – ohhhhh – 386 million years ago, the Devonian Era evokes images of  warm, tropical seas and a bustling marine realm. On land, plants and a few organisms including arthropods, arachnids and paleoinsects, were proliferating into new niche space. Amphibians first evolved in the late Devonian Period, actually just a few million years after the appearance of the first forests.

The pictures below are best viewed at double magnification (click twice) to find the details of the dam itself. The Louisville skyline rests behind the iron bridge’s framework.

My Mother and I decided to troop out one dreary afternoon, across the Ohio River into Indiana for a visit to the “Falls of The Ohio Interpretive Center” – a fascinating and informative educational and interpretive edifice which is ironically built on top of a literal profusion of some of the oldest known fossil beds on the entire planet. The “Falls” were a series of rapids which adversely affected river traffic back during the day when river traffic flowing towards the Mississippi River and thence to the Gulf Of Mexico and a wider world was highly desirable. Louisville became a city at this point and erected a dam and a set of locks for traffic to solve the ultimately impassable rapids.

I like the picture below as it shows the outline of this great modern building as well as revealing the mess a river can make that is 1,000 miles long and drains a quarter of a continent the size of North America. A mile wide in places and running at a surprisingly rapid rate, the Ohio fits every single criterion as one of the world’s great rivers. The driftwood and blanched branches and smaller debris is the accumulation of maybe one or two years. The buildup of debris which floats downriver from West Virginia and Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and the rest of the eastern Midsection of the United States piles up like nobody’s business as cliffs erode and deposit whole trees as well as simply simply titanic amounts of dirt and water into the mighty Ohio River.

Here is a detritus-only view of the pretty much yearly deposits of debris from this mutably filled, oft-receding, oft-filling expanse of running water:

The view below is of some of the fossil beds themselves, with a glance outwards onto the plains and the crevasses which hold these little ancient wonders. The river over some millions of years on its own has carved and shaped the rock into the plains seen here.

And here is a look backwards from the rocky plains carved and eroded by the incessant onrush of such huge amounts of water. The statue is really cool – it is a depiction of the famous North American explorer George Rogers Clark and his fellow explorer, Merriweather Lewis.

Here is a closer look at these two, from the website:

As a youngster who prowled the forests and river banks of Kentucky, in Louisville and, downriver, in Owensboro, I developed a close relationship with the Ohio River. As a high schooler, we often got away from people and adults and ventured into secret lands, hard by the river, for swimming and playing, floating out on massive logs and tree hulks and experiencing the speed of the river’s currents. We fished it and we swam it. I once lost a pair of contact lens in the Ohio – and found them! LOL, adventure was thy name for rambunctious dumb teenagers like ourselves. But that’s the river of which I promise to speak another time – this is about fossils.

As an even younger child, we ventured out around Louisville and found fossils everywhere. It was a fecund natural area for kids who stayed outdoors in those days and who filled the hours with ventures into as many natural forests, creeks and rivers as a day would allow.  Kids would also discover Indian arrowheads and develop lush fantasies about that warrior class of human beings as well as about our local heroes such as Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett. All those kid’s game were wonderful, sort of Mark Twain-like in so very many ways. But I also recall thoughtful, impressive and shared moments as we kids found fossils and wondered about their provenance.

We all had developed a very real sense of prehistory – at least my own family’s people and those of our friends at the time. The wonder at the absolute ancientness of anything which could reflect what it was when it was alive and then become a rock pretty much capped the impossible largeness and mystery of our world and Universe. We actually got good at identifying species – “Look! A fern!”  “Wow! A mollusk and an early one!” rang through the forests and creek beds of limestone where we found these little objects. “That’s not a fossil!” “Is too!” also took place as real fossils chipped off the sides of the ancient cliffs and eroded limestone of our earth in Louisville. Arguments over a fossil or arrowhead’s worthiness as a collectible became intense as we analyzed to the limited best of our scientific little minds.

I am truly glad for those times. Living out West, my daughter got to see its own set of geological wonders. Growing up in Reno, Nevada, Alena could experience the real glories of “steam heat” – Geothermal Benefits – of an area who now relies upon just that. There is also a mountianside of pure Quartz just outside of Reno, abiove the little town of Mogul. Whole cliff faces appear suddenly which are nearly clear or a unbelievably resplendant with its startling white jewelled facade rising up sheer stories into the higher reaches, some of whose chips and rocks can be seen below on the ground as absolutely stunningly gorgeous huge quartz boulders and rocks.

I think I come by my love of rocks honestly, I guess is what I am saying. I have always somewhat specialized in boulder placements in all my landscaping projects. To me, rocks and boulders share an equal billing on Earth. Inanimate they may be but their stories are hidden inside, only waiting for the human imagination to cultivate their fullness and richness. What was the earth like 25,000,000 years ago? Ask a rock. Most of them were well past the age for legal drinking by then.

I love me some fossils:

Just for kicks!

(click images to enlarge)

Sea Biscuit leads the pack at the first turn -

The pace is hot!

Cabbage is up at the head of the bunch

With Bubble Gum, stickin’ to the rail!

It’s a competitive race, ladies and gents!

Banana peels around on the outside!

With Van Gogh charging hard!

And Starburst giving chase!

Cherokee Park even showed up, running hard

With her picnic area tattooed as always

This is a detail horse!

Looking good and stylin’ her Daniel Boone statue!

Royalty was also well-represented as Louisville’s namesake points the way

Although, to be perfectly honest, some horses didn’t much care -

There were some definitely lazy nags at the track that day -

While some were almost too darn excited!

All in all, no one remembered who won. The race was fun all by itself!

Louisville’s “Gallopalooza” is a fund-raising and civic pride phenomenon initiated a few years ago by consigning the best artists in town to do their thing on some gorgeous horses. It’s almost unfair using something as cool and beautiful as a horse to draw and paint on – already beautiful in form, horses are a Louisville love affair. These babies were already placed all over town a few years ago. They are a wonderful institution and uncommonly pretty to look at. They are fun.

Here is some interesting info on the event with many more horses featured in photo’s from Flickr…..here.

(click all images to enlarge)

Peaceful, exotic, unusual, Yew Dell gardens is not your everyday visit. While they have the most gorgeous groupings of evergreens in their classic routine – with smaller, lower-growing species below and the taller groupings behind in a wash of evergreen textures, and all developed carefully over time – there is much more here. Even the more deciduous areas were constructed with the longer view, which means depth, color and structural form of an incredibly appealing nature.

First the evergreens:

Then those more deciduous groupings:

This is a garden that would have to have been a nursery-owner’s delight. Experiments galore still stud the grounds in a riot of stable,aged and  standard plantings, mixed with some real bizarre eye candy. Lovingly constructed by the instigator of all this and his loving wife, Theodore and Martha Klein had them some real fun. Here is a short blurb taken from their website ( http://www.yewdellgardens.org/):

“Beginning with 33-acres of Oldham County farmland in 1941, Theodore and Martha Lee Klein spent the next 60-plus years developing an exquisite private estate, a successful commercial nursery and an extensive collection of unusual plants and outstanding gardens. Known locally, nationally and internationally as a first-rate plantsman, Theodore Klein was also a self-taught artisan who personally crafted the buildings and gardens that became known as Yew Dell.

Through the years, Klein collected over one thousand unusual specimen trees and shrubs which were displayed and evaluated in his arboretum. He also worked to develop new plant varieties for the regional landscape, amassing an impressive list of more than 60 unique introductions over his professional career.”

A perfect example of the level of “whimsy” Mr. Klein brought to bear on his property rests here, in the form of his small “Castle”:

Mr. Klein’s love of and appreciation for stone work is redolent throughout the entire place. His walls and even other entire buildings show a severe appreciation for the beauty and form of stone houses, walls and steps into gardens:

I love this wall. It reeks, somehow, of Kentucky, reminding one of the rows and rows of “slave walls” dry set and loose along the roads around horse farms in Central Kentucky:

In the end, however, it remains the plantings which left the largest impression on this visitor. Here is a series of different-colored Xanthosoma – ranging from a lime green, through a cultivar featuring deep purple stems to another entirely purple variety which absolutely stunned me with its deep purple tone and downright uniqueness. (Check out the reverse side of those gorgeous huge leaves and how they become a dustier “negative” of their reverse):

The velvety texture of the darker portion is hard to capture on camera, but it feels just as lush as it looks.

The fact is, the garden’s fascination with “Purpurea’s” of all types does not stop at those uncanny Xanthosomas. Here is a tiny set of purple Shamrocks -

Odder yet – and tons more purple – is this most surprising Mimosa Tree:

The Yew Dell Garden is a true delight. It’s a bit smaller than I had thought it would be but they manage to cram all sorts of fascinating, weird, wild and wonderful stuff into it in a riot of species, colors and form. We caught it at the onset of Autumn, so we missed a lot of some equally-unusual annuals and the perennials which had just pretty much finished doing their thing.

Frances at FaireGarden will appreciate their love of that gorgeous Muhley Grass, however, stuck as it is here at the entrance to the place -

Fearless, experimental and plain fascinating, sculptures are sporadically placed around the Gardens in auspicious spots as well.

I was particularly taken with The Hand – the sculpture which opened up this post at the top. It’s stark posturing in the middle of a wide expanse of grass just speaks volumes to the unique perspective this gorgeous and interesting garden exudes in so many ways:

Here’s a walkway through some pruned Holly Trees, hard by those purple Xanthosomas and another sculpture. Like I said – the interesting stuff just doesn’t quit.

I confess to my own bias – I am also fascinated with purple as a garden color for some strange reason – and maybe that’s it – the strangeness. But Yew Dell certainly has it in abundance, combined with other slices of absolute uniqueness.

Color everywhere – even in Fall – this garden is well worth anyone’s visit. Eccentric gardens are not that unusual in North America. I know a family in British Columbia who once made themselves a small retreat out of Rhododendrons and Azaleas which got bigger than themselves. Some of these places are now parks people gladly pay to visit in season. Yew Dell, motivated by a nurser and handy man with resources has become every bit of that.

Thanks for coming along!

(left click all images to enlarge…..sometimes twice)

I can’t help but call him Bobby, since that’s who he was when I met him, way back in high school. The truth is, I met his sister, Regina first, but that’s another story. She was drop dead gorgeous and a real hoot to be with. But so was her brother. Bobby and I had some serious adventures and there never has been a more honestly curious person than this exceedingly honest and modest man. Right now, Bobby’s battling some serious illness – with a hopeful treatment he’s going for in Nashville – so we keep our fingers crossed. I recently spent a couple days and a night with him and we reminisced about old times as well as questioning our place in Life and for the future. I really don’t believe I spent a bad day with this guy – ever.

The log cabin he is posing in front of up there he built himself. It is one of those divine Thoreau-esque sorts of places that fits so well in its environment, it nearly appears to have grown there. What is most remarkable about his spread is that it is built on reclaimed strip mined property. Well, actually “reclaimed” is wrong – because it was abandoned back when strip mines would simply get mined out, than un-reclaimed, leaving humongous trenches behind as if some Mighty God had scratched his fingers in dirt leaving parallel lines of destruction behind. But the forest and Nature herself reclaimed what we see here, and it is actually quite something. Here’s a shot off Bobby’s porch:

Here’s the man himself, tinkering with some gadget while I take bad pictures. But it also gives a glimpse into the interior of this – perhaps the single most livable, most comfortable home I ever walked into:

The wood stove to the right in the above picture is the heating unit for the place. Owing to the thickness of the logs and their tight milling, the insulation properties are off the charts good. He burned one log while I was there – a 24 hour heating job. There is plenty of the “raw” look which authenticates the “do-it-yourself” aspect of the construction but it is decidedly not an amateur job – not by any stretch.

The massive stonework fireplace was a chore and a half, according to Bob, and was done by a friend while Bobby lugged in a few tons worth of rock. This picture is a little dark, but the scale shows here, I think:

Warm and inviting, Bobby crafted himself a pure luxurious and homey hideaway. His nearest neighbor is a mile away or so and he is surrounded by everything a Kentucky forest offers. That means moles, ticks, fleas and a bazillion nuisances, lol. He has some great tales of critters and dealing with their intrusiveness. He is constantly afflicted by stray cats who glom onto his place and create kittens. He has liked some of them immensely but soon realized the local hawk and owl population liked them more. A lot more. Bob has the greatest porch I ever saw:

He landscapes his place marvelously, using tasteful groupings and stressing his lawn which adds so much domestication to this wild joint of his. Like many American men, Bobby is sort of fanatical about his grass. I always get a kick out of that, myself, having installed so dang many of them personally. To me owning a lawn is like acquiring a pet – way too much trouble! But these guys love them and, I admit, I can see why. Besides, it’s Kentucky, not Reno, Nevada and it is the very home of Bluegrass.

Here are some looks from the road that leads to his place, featuring views of these old strip mines whose lakes now contain fish – no matter how difficult it is to actually get to the water from some slope of about 70 impossible-to-climb degrees:

It’s now just a little bit of Paradise for a very deserving person and one whom I plan on seeing a lot more of. I like this great sweatshirt he’s wearing, sporting the cool look of my favorite town:

My personal feeling is that if I deserve a friend like Bobby Miller, I am a very blessed man. A little dumb, come to think of it, but then – that’s not a crime yet. Hell, look at our politicians!

Very, very cool place.