Steve Snedeker’s Landscaping and Gardening Blog

I’m doing something I have never done before in this blog. I’m going to borrow an article - this one is from Sports Illustrated today - Christmas day. I want to spread around what I consider one of the neatest Christmas stories I ever read. The article is by Rick Reilly - to my mind, the best sports columnist writing today. I have no idea of where he got the information about this event. It was not advertised anywhere that I generally see - and I go to lots of sports sites.

Most of you had no idea I have worked two years for a juvenile detention facility in Nevada - Rite of Passage. It is a truly bizarre concept but a successful one - it is based on sports and academics. These judicially-placed kids spend a few months in the desert, doing athletics, exercises and unbelievable physical stuff, then graduate to progressively more permissive environments, including high school where they are forced to participate in the community, (ahem) voluntarily.  For example, in the desert, in the first phase, they run 3 miles a day - twice a day! They exercise 4 times a day in group exercises and very challenging ones. They go to school - with California certified teachers. They typically stay here - in Phase One - for 3 months or more, depending on their behavior. The next levels have their own challenges and actually take a bit longer. This is basic training, as it were, and it is where I spent my time.  They become young men is what they do. The recidivism rate is one of the lowest in any program, anywhere.

So I come by my respect for what happened in this article honestly. Some boys and girls are thrown away by their parents. These kids never get what this fabulous community offered them one magical night. Kudos to the coach and all those gorgeous townspeople for this tear-inducing wonderment of humanity. These are my People of the Year: I give you -

They played the oddest game in high school football history last month down in Grapevine, Texas.

It was Grapevine Faith vs. Gainesville State School and everything about it was upside down. For instance, when Gainesville came out to take the field, the Faith fans made a 40-yard spirit line for them to run through.

Did you hear that? The other team’s fans?

They even made a banner for players to crash through at the end. It said, “Go Tornadoes!” Which is also weird, because Faith is the Lions.

It was rivers running uphill and cats petting dogs. More than 200 Faith fans sat on the Gainesville side and kept cheering the Gainesville players on—by name.

“I never in my life thought I’d hear people cheering for us to hit their kids,” recalls Gainesville’s QB and middle linebacker, Isaiah. “I wouldn’t expect another parent to tell somebody to hit their kids. But they wanted us to!”

And even though Faith walloped them 33-14, the Gainesville kids were so happy that after the game they gave head coach Mark Williams a sideline squirt-bottle shower like he’d just won state. Gotta be the first Gatorade bath in history for an 0-9 coach.

But then you saw the 12 uniformed officers escorting the 14 Gainesville players off the field and two and two started to make four. They lined the players up in groups of five—handcuffs ready in their back pockets—and marched them to the team bus. That’s because Gainesville is a maximum-security correctional facility 75 miles north of Dallas. Every game it plays is on the road.

This all started when Faith’s head coach, Kris Hogan, wanted to do something kind for the Gainesville team. Faith had never played Gainesville, but he already knew the score. After all, Faith was 7-2 going into the game, Gainesville 0-8 with 2 TDs all year. Faith has 70 kids, 11 coaches, the latest equipment and involved parents. Gainesville has a lot of kids with convictions for drugs, assault and robbery—many of whose families had disowned them—wearing seven-year-old shoulder pads and ancient helmets.

So Hogan had this idea. What if half of our fans—for one night only—cheered for the other team? He sent out an email asking the Faithful to do just that. “Here’s the message I want you to send:” Hogan wrote. “You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth.”

Some people were naturally confused. One Faith player walked into Hogan’s office and asked, “Coach, why are we doing this?”

And Hogan said, “Imagine if you didn’t have a home life. Imagine if everybody had pretty much given up on you. Now imagine what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you.”

Next thing you know, the Gainesville Tornadoes were turning around on their bench to see something they never had before. Hundreds of fans. And actual cheerleaders!

“I thought maybe they were confused,” said Alex, a Gainesville lineman (only first names are released by the prison). “They started yelling ‘DEE-fense!’ when their team had the ball. I said, ‘What? Why they cheerin’ for us?’”

It was a strange experience for boys who most people cross the street to avoid. “We can tell people are a little afraid of us when we come to the games,” says Gerald, a lineman who will wind up doing more than three years. “You can see it in their eyes. They’re lookin’ at us like we’re criminals. But these people, they were yellin’ for us! By our names!”

Maybe it figures that Gainesville played better than it had all season, scoring the game’s last two touchdowns. Of course, this might be because Hogan put his third-string nose guard at safety and his third-string cornerback at defensive end. Still.

After the game, both teams gathered in the middle of the field to pray and that’s when Isaiah surprised everybody by asking to lead. “We had no idea what the kid was going to say,” remembers Coach Hogan. But Isaiah said this: “Lord, I don’t know how this happened, so I don’t know how to say thank You, but I never would’ve known there was so many people in the world that cared about us.”

And it was a good thing everybody’s heads were bowed because they might’ve seen Hogan wiping away tears.

As the Tornadoes walked back to their bus under guard, they each were handed a bag for the ride home—a burger, some fries, a soda, some candy, a Bible and an encouraging letter from a Faith player.

The Gainesville coach saw Hogan, grabbed him hard by the shoulders and said, “You’ll never know what your people did for these kids tonight. You’ll never, ever know.”

And as the bus pulled away, all the Gainesville players crammed to one side and pressed their hands to the window, staring at these people they’d never met before, watching their waves and smiles disappearing into the night.

Anyway, with the economy six feet under and Christmas running on about three and a half reindeer, it’s nice to know that one of the best presents you can give is still absolutely free.

Hope.

I sit here amid an absolutely dreadfully awesome Winter Storm, the likes of which has not been seen in some time in the Portland area, looking fearfully outside as the winds howl at about 40MPH and the temperature drops to a not very robust 18 degrees. The snow is coming down sideways, lol. It’s one of those paralyzing storms where they have closed major highways. Then, to top all that off, the winds will shift to the East and meet this wet warm front later tonight, making the most righteous Ice Rain possibility - to top all the snow off. Fact - I am not sure I have seen worse conditions.

Remember this picture anyone?

How about now?

Or This (borh taken from the local news):

That gives an idea, but that was yesterday! Today, it really came.

I just walked outside briefly and it took my breath away. It made me think of some of those things I miss the most about warmer weather and, especially, the advent of Spring. This is more what I am looking for:

Portland is so much nicer in the Spring! I admit it, I am a wimp! Give me a white dogwood tree, Maestro! Something lush for these cold and blustery Winter nights.

I’ll even take a rose!

Thank you all. I feel better now.

Much of what I blog about refers very specifically to what I know. It gives me a certain freedom of expression within these landscaping parameters that I don’t have when speculating on matters I may think about but which I have not, in fact, done. Politics, for example, while I spend ample time considering the greatness of some famous politicians and the lying weasel aspects of others, are a pastime and not something I am utterly competent to speak of. Like most of us, I can complain  a lot! I do that pretty well, the fact is, just not in here.

But I do know rocks. By golly, I know rocks like a lover knows the curve of a spine or the taste of familiar  lips. But rocks are family too! I have such a long term relationship with rocks, stones, gravel and rock mulch, when I get to Heaven I am positive they will put me in a celestial excavator and dump some titanic load of fractured Glacial Schist for me to make stuff out of.

Yesssssss!! ………………………….. “Hey, is that all you got?”

“I thought this was Heaven, Man!”

The not very secret fact is, I would be more than delighted. Placing rocks - the art of integrating boulders into a landscape and providing an almost immediate sense of permanency - to me is perhaps the finest form of artistic expression landscaping allows. The intensity of placing rocks lies in their permanence. As one adds boulders into the primitive beginnings to an eventual landscape, the heart always beats a little faster. I always get the feeling of “setting the stage” for everything that follows - plants, paving, the envisioned walkways. It therefore becomes something more than just a few rocks in the ground. These become the spine of the body of work. You tend to think in planes - geometrics. For example, many of my landscape rock placements have flat tops on them, hopefully virtually parallel with the ground itself. This gives yet another plane aspect to what will eventually rear up so vertical in the person of plants and constructions. In fact, it never seems enough. I want every rock to be that plane.

Dropping a rock into place follows some very standard guidelines - typically, you want about a third of it underground. This to insure they don’t roll over and ruin the siding or worse, but also to embed itself so that eventual erosion and winds don’t expose the bottom. Nothing looks less permanent than some gigantic marble in your front yard or patio. Boulders like the ones below - your water-formed, circular and soft-lined river rocks - form a gentle presence stuck into a landscape. I use them here as seat rocks surrounding a fire pit and they serve that function well. The mellow curves and solid appearance of such well-formed boulders makes them an entirely welcome addition, blending as they do with the gentle curves of any landscape. They have a sensual style, nearly anthropomorphic, resembling things like clouds in the sky, rich for imaginations and for their gentle acceptance.

Used economically, they can anchor a landscape with permanence and form and provide lines which break up the monotony of paving or otherwise simple constructions.

These rounded rocks, showing the effects of centuries of wear and tear - of rolling around on river bottoms and being pummelled relentlessly by rushing water - seem so innocent and placid when in place. But then, all rocks do this, don’t they? We look at a rock and we see our innate vestigal human image of something totally permanent. (Unless, of course, we are geologists.) We see rivers and we see creeks when we see these rounded items -

Or more placid settings where the pools formed over centuries are bordered by such well-worn stones -

But not all rocks are equal! These cute little round boulders are great for the gentle among us. But there are other stones whose very form challenges us, in the most riveting and jarring artistic ways -

These may also be anthropormorphic in their own rights…………what do we make of that hulking beast above? Some daemonic Chinese stone that wakes up at night to prowl our ‘hoods, made to order to scare little kids into making sure they go back to bed?

Or something like this big fellow, wise beyond it’s ancient years, standing alone and all-seeing among the plants he watches over, yet still able to evince a wonder at its teetering presence?

Rocks speak to us if we care to listen. They come in a pretty stunningly wide variety and they can be placed in remarkable ways by the enterprising landscaper. Some, we put together in combinations to simply attract attention, almost always in 3’s -

Some we bore holes into - all the way down their length - in order to have them perform a water dance while looking gorgeous as is their wont -

And some we just plaster together to see what happens -

We hang them off stuff, just because they are good-looking -

And still others beg us to do weird things with. They plea for an arrangement where they can show off best and give us humans some wonder in our boring lives -

Working with rocks and boulders has always been one of the true treats of my trade. I am sure it’s obvious I enjoy working with them and the very obvious truth, as well, is that I like operating machines that move them around! NO - let me rephrase that - I LOVE operating those machines! Honestly, there is something more than a little appealing about arranging these behemoths in a morning and have a client come home and see 30 huge boulders set in place. For example, we did this (at least the rocks) in about one day - he was pretty shocked.

But aside from my personal inclinations, rocks themselves are a marvelous adjunct to any landscaping enterprise. They can provide lines that interrupt or they can supply lines in a landscape that emphasize a certain quality of horizontal or even vertical planes. Oh - almost forgot - they can also provide seats!

In short…………………Rocks rock!

On the face of it, a person could deem this a pretty attractive patio. The alternating exposed aggregate and broom-finished tops of the finished panels looks interesting and even somewhat unique. The few flaws it began with never really amounted to anything spectacularly bad and so it served as a great outdoor environment for this nice couple for a few decades.

(most pictures enlarge on clicking)

Eventually, however, things began breaking down. Especially when wood products are used in conjunction with cement such as this place, the eventual deterioration of the organic product is simply inevitable no matter how much sealer or preservative is used. Being as this is in Reno, there is also the deleterious effect of the constant onslaught of sunlight. The UV ratings for Reno off simply off the charts. The sun can act as well to hasten the effects of constant drying and wetting of wood from sprinklers and the washing of the patio. Add snowfall effects and the salty and chemical additives to the snow removal process and you have a perfect storm for concrete deterioration.

The bottom line came when the residents began tracking deteriorating pieces of material into their house with regularity. The cement was crumbling and deteriorating after the long years and the floor in the kitchen was showing it all. Where the wood partitions in some of the cement panels had worn down, their edges produced a fairly constant source of gritty dust and chunks of cement. They decided they wanted to redo it all, in short, so they called us. We agreed on a product and a price as well as a schedule and began the work. Our first order of business was to take out the old patio. Jackhammer in hand, we went at it.

It was actually not bad work, as these things go. Yes, it was constantly in the upper 90’s at the time - even past 100 degrees later on in the project - but, as can be seen here, there was ample shade from a monster European Birch nearby. Having that tree was pretty fabulous. This work is hard and when it’s over 100, something more than hard, moving into dangerous. Did I mention we liked the tree?

Anyway, we finally cleared the existing mess then excavated down a ways (the cement has been set on soil, as we had expected) - this way we could establish a sub base of our own compact able rocky material, standard in all our paver installations.

There were the usual abundance of items to watch out for below the surface, from irrigation lines to electrical conduit, almost all of which we had no desire to replace, so it was a bit slower than one might want.

Just the same, as can be seen in the above picture, what we did was excavate and fill, taking away soil and adding a rock mulch to replace it with. As I have explained in other posts, we look for a very hard and durable sub base below where we add the pavers. A thick layer of base rock can often get us to a compaction intensity we want and which will assure longevity and durability.

So we add the base material, rake it out, then wet it to about 12% and run a compactor - a plate tamper - over the top of it. This vibrates and provides an amazingly intense downward pressure with  lot of weight. The combination of shimmying and weight leads to a supremely tight and well-compacted substrata. What we end up with is a fairly good surface, over which we add approximately an inch or less of a fine washed sand. The sand allows us to grade absolutely perfectly, leaving a surface we know will come out just as perfect as is what’s below.

From the above stages, we go to the next phase, which is far more detailed. Arriving at the finished grade at the surface, at this stage every move we make will reflect on the top. It has to be perfect. The sand allows for some faults occurring below to be rectified. The sand process is always the final answer, grade wise. From here, we lay the bricks.

Drainage: Even in somewhere as generally dry as Reno, Nevada drainage issues matter hugely. The fact that Reno gets almost all of its rainfall (and snow) in a 4 month span means as well that it comes in a rush. I have seen 4 foot snowfalls overnight as well as consistent pounding rain arriving in buckets. In a sense, these downpours and packed snow problems make for an environment every bit as threatening concerning drainage issues as anywhere, including the North West. We were extremely fortunate that the concrete edging used for the initial project was still very intact and usable. It had a small % grade - around 1 percent (translating into 1/8 inch per foot)- which is perfect. I only mention this owing to how vital it is in general. This project was pretty fabulous for that reason and allowed us to rearrange things in an orderly and far easier manner. But know this - mistakes in drainage are lethal to a home’s foundations and for general appearance and wood damage. Just a head’s up: Make sure things drain away from the house.

Next post, we lay the first bricks.

With the sub base intact now, and the sand ’screeded’ (leveled) at 1 inch thick or so to give us a fairly perfect base on which to lay pavers, we begin laying in some pavers. The irony of paver placement is in the speed at which they can be laid in place. I say “irony” because, with a perfect surface to work on, the pavers get laid about as fast as they can be brought over to the layer. Easily the most labor-intensive aspect of any paver project, it is the one place where a strong back and a good set of legs gets things done in quicker style.

While the general coverage goes fast, as always, it is the details that hang one up. Here my foreman, Kenny, gives a wry look at his business while dealing with that week’s equivalent of the New York Times Crossword Puzzle.

Nasty work! Adding to his woes, the tolerance for achieving the sought-after drainage meant we needed to shove the pavers under the wood almost at the same level where the initial cement was placed, which was at the highest grade achievable. Snug. It’s a pain when the pavers that get cut need to slide under such a minimal tolerance. It literally requires putting pavers down, then lifting, then fitting back. One just hopes the cuts were good. Otherwise………..the dreaded interpersonal fireworks!

For an idea of how the trimming of pavers to conform to the edge is so vital, take a look below. Bear in mind, this is the outer edge. Imagine doing it blind, like Ken did above, with the siding protruding over and just a tape measure to get it right. It takes some serious patience to get it right and he pulls it off regularly. He’s a better man than I, lol.

Here is another look at the outer edge. Plus, the work in the upper part is what the “screeded” sand looks like, just prior to getting pavers laid over. The small rubber mallet is used to “persuade” reluctant pavers to get with the program and go in. It also serves to tamp them down into place.

Here Corey is placing them after cutting. He was on his own on this while waiting for Kenny to supply those nasty fitters under the siding. He also did a fabulous job on this project, acting as the primary labor dude, hustling pavers over and then adapting to his next chore which involved cutting and placing the edge stones. He was The Man, too. Very fashionable shorts, I hasten to add!

Having said all that about all that, a good edge is a beautiful thing. It satisfies the professional in the installers and it is something clients adore no end. Forgive the terrible focus on the next picture, but I think the idea of perfection and its appeal is borne out.

In the end, we end up with a very satisfying end product that met every criterion they asked for: an attractive surface, perfect in its level, easy to walk on and rather sumptuous in its overall appearance.

I omitted the fact that there was an interior patio as well. It is inside an atrium, surrounded by the house itself and which developed the same cement problems with deterioration. It was somewhat painstaking packing the heavy and very sloppy broken cement through this gorgeous home, so we obviously protected walls and floors from our assault. In the end, it worked out every bit as well:

In case anyone wonders, the name of this impressive lit up home is called The Million Light House, in Portland, Oregon. It is “all of that”, beyond a doubt. It is far more amazing when you’re standing in front of it. The sheer volume of lights and some truly excellent arranging make it quite a spectacle. You can click it to enlarge.

Lighting has always been a focus of mine. Owning the night can happen at one’s own premises, and in very tasteful ways. What has especially impressed me has been the revolution caused by low voltage lighting and its amazing ease of installation. Much science and art have also been put to the task of tastefully lighting up our outdoor environments, resulting in some fabulously interesting and far more enjoyable areas - and in our own homes! Making a home safer for walking as well as for security reasons all make sense, to say nothing of how lighting dramatically increases the amount of time one wants to spend enjoying his place.

Since this is the Christmas Season, naturally it seems topical as heck to bring up Christmas lighting and how it also has developed into far more creative displays using tremendously less power. Lighting technology is one of those areas which keeps getting better and more usable. A trip through a catalog of any lighting supplier is now a trip through a stunning array of low voltage, high impact methods of presenting the magic of light in the darkness of our nights, leading us to some very surprising and uplifting experiences at home.