True Mud – Part Dieux

Once again, I have to speak to the fact that “Mud moves me”.

Mud, in fact, has been such an outrageous truism of my work, the actual process involved in installing landscapes required an entirely new adaptive vocabulary.

We now speak of “Spackling” an area with the back sides of shovels on those areas which are too soft to actually walk on without leaving 6 inch deep mud prints – or worse, losing a boot. Spackling means beating the mud into the condition of smoothness that can eventually receive the back mulch or the turf/sod to be put on top of it. It is a completely necessary step.

We also sometimes grab plywood or pallets and walk on them en route to various duties, finding our overall terrain “spackled” simply by weight and a flat surface.

(Teufel Nursery’s “Mud Buggy”. LOL, high tech meets the mud.)

Percolation” refers to water leaving the mud – obviously downwards. Where it will not “percolate” – where some natural or man-made structure prohibits draining – there we will see piping and methods of collection and disbursement. We would, for example, “spackle” an area of loose, rutted, slimy mud, walking backwards and working our way out, so that over time, it will “percolate” away and be quite solid after a short period of time.

Here is an excellent rendition of using plywood for grading and support at the same time.

The down side of this is that we seldom have any of that precious commodity – Time. Thus, we are beset with yet deeper problems, having to work on top of this stuff and finish the project within the always-ticking periodic framework agreed to. The picture below is an innocent enough look at a project which was one of my 10 most incredible mud events.

Looked at above, it seems straightforward enough. This picture is taken about 7 years after the actual installation and said installation was absurdly hard, made more so by an uncooperative supervisor – which happens.

The entire courtyard was completed except for the grassy area and walkways, at the time it became more problematic than normal. We had installed the big Catalpa Tree and all the plantings surrounding this courtyard quite successfully, adding terrific topsoil and plantings. What we were faced with was sodding. Following sod, we would then be able to install the borders for the limestone pathways and install the paths themselves.

Christmas was approaching. As the rain increased, daily – it was a hugely wet Winter – and the Holidays closed in, even acquiring the sod itself was facing problems. Meanwhile, the contractor was finishing everywhere except for where all “the dam mud” was. We decided we had to make a move, ordered up the sod from an initially reluctant but eventually quite happy supplier (income can be hard to come by just before Christmas).

The day began by receiving 16 pallets of sod – 8,000 square feet, more or less. Of course, even finding a place to stash all the sod was difficult because the outlying streets were narrow. Offloading the sod became as much a chore itself as the laying would prove to be as we found ourselves directing traffic and even dealing with police who fielded complaints.

Then it began snowing. 😉

I am reminded of a quote I once read by William Glasser and its relevance to our theme today redounds mightily in my little head, much as it did that day, when everything seemed so impossible and so ineffably hopeless:  “It is almost impossible for anyone, even the most ineffective among us, to continue to choose misery after becoming aware that it is a choice.” 

My point? It will show up soon.

We had raided the local Juvenile Detention Facility – a minimum security place – of kids 16 or so who the powers there were looking to keep busy, preferably with hard work. Well, we had that.  🙂

They had asked if we could pay whatever minimal figure it was they wanted these boys to have – as I recall it was about $1.75 or so, lol.  There was no way we were going to pay that. In private, with these go-getters, we secretly mentioned we’d be paying them 5 times that but we needed them to work in impossible conditions and work real hard. I felt like Charlie Sheen – WINNING!!!  It was hilarious watching their eyes light up in this muddy conspiracy, which got even more out of control when we mentioned we’d be buying lunch as well from McDonalds. Man, some folks are just easy.

So there we were……….16 – 2 ton pallets of wet sod, heavier than a car with 4 of us and our 5 – 16 year old 135 pound kids, already wetter than hell in 34 degree weather. Intermittent rain and snow finally gave way to pure snow with flakes the size of Texas as the self-made tunes broke out like Christmas caroling in Hell. As I recall, I began the music part of the festival with some strictly Elvis Christmas work, and the boys sang with me at first, eventually bursting out into more serious tuneage as we slugged and mugged our way through the worst weather I have ever encountered during a landscape project.

Making Matters Worse!! Thank You! Thank You!  😉

Oh – I nearly forgot one small, teensy, weensy item. As we entered the site that morning, I stepped into what appeared to be a disturbed soil area and sank 3 feet in near-water. It was stunning – I was totally shocked at the appearance of “quicksand” in such an urban environment, and that’s a pretty monstrous understatement.  When I asked the supervisor what was up, he mentioned he had forgotten about running conduit and wiring for the electrically-fed lamp posts around the courtyard and that he had completed that process the prior day (we weren’t there) with a backhoe and some grumpy electricians.

What it did, of course, was make a circle – 2 feet wide and 3 feet deep – around the entire interior of the courtyard of the most thin mud imaginable. Stepping into it was to simply disappear, lol. What a day! Lordy, I got madder than I’d been in recent years – it was an incredible mistake on his part and what he was doing was asking me to work on, in spite of the ‘quicksand’. Of course, he was also asking me to bail him out, was the truth of the matter. When we realized this, it made the entire episode somehow more tolerable, so we, ahem………get this………..”Held our mud”. Ha!

Off we go, sod in hand, a slurry of kids reeling under the weight of even just one clay-packed roll of sod, weighing in at least 40-50 pounds apiece and walking a moving bridge I supplied with strategically-placed plywood and, then, later, using the pallets we acquired as we exhausted the sod stacked on each. The famous Gene Kelly tune “Singing In The Rain” made an appearance, once the snow briefly stopped and the rain intensified, lol. It was total anarchy. Lunch consisted of wet people staying wet and shivering, then returning to the chore as fast as possible, simply to stay warm.

Finally the snow began coming in such an amazing heavy fall, and with these huge flakes, the place quieted down and it became almost cathedral-like in the silence and awesome weird sensuality amid the apparent impossibility of our quest. Our camaraderie was off the charts as we all – to a man, or boy – fought against currents devised to destroy motivation and energy. But we got even. We got better. As our relentlessness persisted, we began seeing green behind us, adapting ‘in situ” to the evolving problems of mud seeping through the spaces in pallets by moving them more often. The green behind us began expanding and that gorgeous space alone became a motivator of fabulous property.

Late in the day – and, yes, it was dark now – we finished. Our ten hours of effort paid off and we looked back on our accomplishment with a shared pride so rare I am not sure I’ve ever felt the likes again. My debt to the kids who joined us as well as to my normal crew showed me the depths of a gratitude that only a team working in such impossible conditions could provide. It felt like some sort of Medal Ceremony was in order.

And, by the way, it looked beautiful.

We finished the day and we finished the sod and by the time we were done, we saw 3 full inches of snow on the ground behind us with a covering settling in which would make that look small. We paid the kids their cash, had some good laughs and arranged for them to be back the next day for a huge clean-up and for some more work. Mario and I adored the guys – they were funner than fun.

The next day, the project supervisor who very purposefully missed the prior day showed up and his reaction was a total classic. To call it shocked would be a complete understatement. The soil supplier and the sod supplier both showed up as well as we had the kids undertake the “dreadful task” – ha ha! I’m a liar! – of cleaning the streets off with fire hoses from a hydrant.

“Steve, Good Lord, man, it’s a miracle! I can’t believe you did that!” Of course, this was the same guy who the day before said, “Shut up and get the dam job done.”

So there’s another good mud story.

Musings On Growing Up – “Black Ink”

I’ve taken a break recently from blogging here. This blog is always a labor of love and has of course changed in many ways as my circumstances have altered. To be frank, the break has been good for me. I have always cringed at – yet accepted the rules and time constraints of toil as a normal diet of maturity. I think we all have.

I have been fortunate enough in my landscaping career to have encountered the tickling sensations of accomplishment, for which I am eternally grateful. It takes us nearer to an immortality as we devise what we suspect are permanent systems of substance for the pleasure of those to whom we labor. Both parties gain immeasurably – the client from his living aid – the contractor/designer from his gift to the world and his labors. His crew experience their own brushes with Righteousness as the projects close.

Work itself, as we all know, offers redemption as well as accomplishment. As Eric Hoffer says:

“No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are.”

I agree. This is exactly why you need a waterfall!!!   😉  (Made by me!!)

Back to work…………and the reality of My Work:

On the negative end (at work) the injuries, the occasional dust-ups with anger from all sides, the incredibly helplessness in the face of a mean-spirited Weather God, bereft of humor save for Irony – all form an alternative Universe which seems to descend inexorably on us all.

What to make of all this? All these Opposites!

Recently, in the space of a month, the faces of the remote and oddly-disconnected Love and Death settled in, affecting my heart and soul to degrees I am scrambling to catch up with. Fate decided to present me with the exquisite pleasure of finally meeting someone who means as much to me as nearly anyone I’ve ever known. A reunion of souls occurred which had its origins here – on a computer. My virtual “family” became one in fact as an indescribably lovely series of events scrolled across my human life and perceptions like an Early Christmas for the Soul. I felt rich beyond measure as we conversed, face to face – as if I had done something very Right.

Subsequently, a dear Soul mate and member of my extended family passed away, God bless her. She loved me and my family extremely dearly, did Katie Short. Without resorting to the maudlin, I will just say it reminded me of something more obviously substantial as time goes on: that life compresses with age. Events actually gather momentum and stream helplessly as the Eternity imagined from Youth becomes less of that. The pain is real, much as was the Love I have gained from the former event.

 

On a lesser – but incredibly evocative and meaningful level – I also watched myself  literally “lose” 2 living friends, as emotional events created another graveyard – this one mired in vanity, loss and misperception. It made me wonder if somehow I had not been paying attention to the parallel Universe where persons and events smack together like loose Protons and Quarks, as we continue sightlessly forward, immeasurably confused about the human motives and all of our human frailties. Our tiny egos march ahead like lions as our suspected courage makes us less than we once were, robbing us of our destinies and presenting us with problems we must actually wait for others to decide on. The absolute, complete absurdity of life never stops………. and all we seem to be able to do is endure it. This is inarguable for us all. I have therefore finally learned something – “It is”, as they say, “what it is”.

Not much of a prize, is it?

Heavy thoughts on this Saturday morning.

It’s been a Summer of stunning emotional variety and not all of it good whatsoever. Challenged by these events, I feel somehow chastened – as if I am realizing truths and factoids which exist in the amazingly huge gaps between the human atoms.

I arrived to my 60’s like March does – with a roar and a massive red hot club, playing the crap out of softball, embracing an evolving life like a vain 18 year old. A couple years into it, I have gotten myself beat to crap, lol.

As I often quote Mike Hammer: “It was like the kiss at the end of a hot, wet fist.”  😉

Here’s an irony: I admit I do still feel pretty darn good. I now wonder if this blanket, unthinking optimism is some style of curse, leering at me like The Last Temptation. I know – I am waving my weenie at Fate Itself in this unusually sophomoric fantasy which recognizes pretty much my feelings as some sort of bottom line. In a sense, even a beaver or maybe even that tin can over there can see the futility of that.

Right now, I don’t think so. For better or for worse, I feel my connections to real folks and they warm me. When I analyze my wide-ranging and numerous life mistakes, they Tazer me back with massive, clinging regret and they cool me back down. My regrets are Huge. Massive. The tale of them forms a line of shame. These ‘faux pas’ could destroy anyone. I smile and nod and hug others, and I feel unworthy as hell sometimes. How does one live with his guilt, I often ponder?

I now realize this is life itself. Our mistakes are a field of accounting which never realizes Black Ink. Nor can we “take them back”.

I have come to believe we need to begin each and every day with a clean slate.  I know – it’s a perfect dodge, lol. But I confess this aphorism has more merit the more I entertain its relevance to this planet of ours:

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” Matthew 6:34

Burning Man – Artistic Genius – Then Burn It Up

Since Burning Man begins in a month – always over the Labor Day weekend, giving yet another insane rendering of “Labor” – and make no mistake, for those Black Rock Rangers and the other intrepid workers who lay out and construct what you see below – there is a ton of work they labor at, in a pleasure so pure it hurts:

(left click images to enlarge)

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In the end, a city of 40,000 campers looks just like this:

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The efforts get cleaned in a rather dramatic fashion, later, including the burning, as mentioned below, of everything, no matter how temporarily cool:

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I’m doing this post to please a friend who asked about what all the hubub was over Burning Man. She had never heard of it. Since I’ve been there, I have my own very personal opinion. So, Marcia – here ya go. The event is coming soon. Adventurous, thought-provoking, anarchistic, artistic – the adjectives flow like water over the Niagra Falls………..in the end, while it is indescribably interesting, make no mistake – it’s fun!

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I guess I’m stretching a bit to present what to many is a scandalously misunderstood event in here in my nice conservative, construction and design-related blog, but I feel somehow almost obligated to. I enjoy sharing my life in every way and I obviously appreciate products I consider items of artistic genius.

My interest in this popular and controversial event  stems from these underpinnings. And I am one who fully believes Burning Man is an event of Timeless value.  There are many sayings and diatribes on how we contaminate reality with belief, but the purity of the vision here and the enthusiasm of its participants, is wholly off the charts. This event is unique in the world – thus drawing so many travelers who design visits around it. I guess that pretty much says it all.

(click any image to enlarge)

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Burning Man is a week-long event of something more than epic proportions, held on the same “playa” or lake bed where the world land speed record was set a few years ago by the crazed Englishman piloting a virtual jet car at above the speed of sound. Gerlach, Nevada is about 60 miles Northest of Reno and it is an otherwise sleepy, oppressively hot burg of a scattered population of every political persuasion known to man. But the world class events which happen out its front windows are some crazy stuff.

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What began in 1986 with a few guys hoisting up an 8′ high wooden “Man” and then setting the sucker on fire on Baker Beach in San Fransisco, has now evolved into something of a virtual culture. This year, 48,000 people will congregate in the Black Rock Desert to participate in this year’s version of Burning Man – a festival like absolutely no other. Here, from the Burning Man’s own website is the timeline and history of the event.

You can see some strange stuff out there!

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Nature gets gorgeous and pretty crazy during a stay in the desert like this. One sure needs good shades, some serious sun screen and a ton of water. Dust storms are normal, not rare – it seems every year is good for a nasty, good sized dust storm: Here comes one now!

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But Nature also gives………..

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It may surprise people to realize that the average age of a Burning Man attendee is around 35. After a walk around, through all the amazingly well-organized streets of campers, sporting silliness and wonder, it becomes more obvious.

Burning Man is a “barter zone” – money is only allowed for use at the Main Tent for coffee, lemonades and for the purchase of Ice. Otherwise, you can leave your wallet back where “civilization” rules. The Burning Man experience is so creative, large and literally engulfing, that you find yourself contributing. In the end, in fact, this is the energy behind the event. It has indeed become something of a culture of its own, led by enterprising artists and Internet-savvy art geeks and it provides a wonder of stuff – nearly indescribable, really. Night time scenes see amazing high tech lighting and nocturnally-inspired art work:

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And the “Mobile Art”, lol. The Art Cars have institued their own world of whimsy, now featuring an Art Car Festival in Houston, Texas and a natural outgrowth of the male need to tinker and play, lol. Needless to say, these were always my favorites:

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Some are just for fun

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Some are more serious:

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And these are just the “cars”. The art?

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This is what grownups can do, lol…………

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A pretty solid visual feast, no matter how you look at it.

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Then it disappears – in 3 days, it will be as if no one had even been there.

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From these, the Fire Temple of wood, above and two years of The Man below:

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2008:

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From this……….

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To this:

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It’s all good, interesting, exciting and always weird  – which is the point. It’s is the single most Artistical Artical Event ever. 😉

Kablooey!

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A Note On Friendship – Life’s Passages, Love And Nature

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(enlarge pictures by left clicking)

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Bobby’s freshly unceremonious ceremony…………. Perfectly-held for the man who may have been the least pretentious person his friends and acquaintances will ever meet in their entire lives.

We really and truly had a great crowd……..there were some tears, some grateful and comforting and oh-so-human hugs and lots of laughter in an absolutely captivating series of loving memories. If I had to capsulize my impression of things, I would probably say the day was an utter delight – in spite of its function – which was also served.

Saying goodbye.

Bobby’s daughter Morgan and her friends and equally gorgeous soccer mates were there to provide the perfect splash of youth, beauty and the caring spirit which Bobby was always so instrumental in somehow manufacturing in a world which seems not to value that as much as it once may have. His touch was everywhere, in the modest and grateful spirit of his wife, Kim and in the freshly-bereaved Morgan, whose support system is the envy of the English-speaking world. (She is the beauty on the left in the picture below). Let me be as clear as possible – these are some of the nicest persons on the planet.

Let me add this, in praise to the arrangers – of whom there were so many. If food were a measure of a man, judging by what was given at this event, Bobby Miller was a daggone Giant. Suffice it to say, the comfort food was off the charts – not only in quantity, but in quality.

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And so the weekend ends………………

I just drove back from Owensboro after attending this nicely informal ‘wake’ for my great friend Bobby Miller who passed away last week. The party was held outdoors and indoors, enduring torrential rainfall a couple of times during the affair and even the sounds of tornado warning sirens in the distance more than once. It was sort of a revelation – In this iPod, Blackberry world, we were able to access more specific local weather events immediately and we did hear of a twister which landed not so far away, just to make things more exciting. Man, it is also truly an rather severe April to remember, weather-wise, with more electrical storms than many natives have ever seen – all in a non-stop series of storm  events, tumbling along one after another.

Crossing the Ohio River and dropping down into Owensboro from the Indiana side revealed a cresting river, spilling over it banks into nearby fields, the farmer’s plains, as it were. This area is so flat near a river which – like the Yangtze or The Nile – is quite famous locally for its Spring Time flooding and dropping some rich silt onto these fields which, in 5 months, will be sporting corn or soybeans in a vast green swath of agricultural Plenty.

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But for now?  You can’t see much dirt, can you?  😉  That, for the record, is those afore-mentioned fields – they are just a bit underwater currently. The river itself is a good 3 miles North of this, in the distance..

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But it was gorgeous, too – warm, sultry air, the humidity completely off the charts in 73 degree weather – the Springtime features like the profusion of young lime green leaves maturing in this deciduous forest, dogwoods and other ornamental blossoms bursting out with even some shrubbery nearly ready to join the horticultural party.

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As I mentioned, my friend Bobby was quite an amateur landscaper, having done all his landscaping work himself as well as building the home. He used the local flora to augment his planning, making this gorgeous green expanse butt up next to the forest in a seamless, natural way, transitioning the parking area to domestication up a small set of stairs and surrounding his home with absolutely luscious perennials and azaleas.

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I’m kicking myself for not getting a picture of the Columbines which were just beginning to act out, but then, there was so much compelling interaction to be had on the human level, I would go hours before remembering I had a camera. Low tech Man!

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Here’s a glimmer of the activity above, complete with the dead White Pine in the rear yard to the left which someone asked my analysis of.

“The Pine? Oh, it’s dead.” (I kept it short and sweet  😉  )

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It was especially deeply rewarding for me in that I had grown up with so many of these folks and then moved so far away for so long. What was so especially rewarding for strictly selfish reasons was the sense of “return” on such a deeply emotional and thoroughly “connected” basis.I was seeing old friends I’d known when I was 12 years old and who surrounded me and influenced me all those long years ago. These people are a part of me, embedded so deeply they can’t be peeled away. They are the statues, the icons in my own native experience and they all make up who I am this very day.

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The amazing sense of unconditional love, of friendship and of our human commonality on this day filled me with a religious type of spirit. I turned away with a couple of tears more than once as I saw others breaking down on their own, over a story, a memory or simply just because of the overall sense of the moment itself. This was a very religious event, in the end, our bidding goodbye to our precious friend, father and relative. Bobby Miller sooo got the send off he would be so proud of.