(It is all of 7 degrees here in Louisville, Kentucky, as I write this. It was a balmy 27 yesterday at times, so I am more driven to see something to mitigate this Winter pain. My stay in Louisville has been marvelous from a strictly people aspect. Taking care of my Mother is like – well – it IS actually – a walk in the park. No stress, lots of family for a change and my peripatetic daughter is in classes in San Diego. Life is good – if freaking cold. And it is cold. I do not much like it, lol. Let me rephrase this – it is dreadful. I am far too ‘West Coast-ish’, if that’s a term, which 42 years there would do to one. Plus, we get another few months of this, unless Global Warming gets it done!
This post was composed in May of 2009. It is a long one, filled with pictures of flowers, lakes, sun, ducks and some writing about someone I don’t mind reposting about – a fine person. Just to keep the Springtime vibes alive, read and I hope you enjoy:)
“Extravagance” is the term I am so often set with concerning Rhododendrons. Like the Proteus plant, the simple size, girth and literal glamor of the bloom have few peers anywhere. The profuseness of a Rhododendron when in bloom I honestly believe has no peer anywhere in Nature. I love so many plants – they have been my stock in trade – but this one hovers in another sphere of general gorgeousness.
(click any image to enlarge like mad)
In the Northwest, there are rhododendron gardens all over the place. This week (May) in Florence, Oregon – on the Oregon Coast – there is a Rhododendron Festival, a full-fledged Rhodie fest complete with parades and displays and thousands of believers. Of course, everyone loves a party – so there is that. It’s been a long winter here – so there is that as well. But they’ve been having this particular festival for long years now. Love for the Rhododendron is not new here.
For purely selfish Photo Contest reasons, I add this earlier-blooming item here. I can’t imagine it not “belonging” anywhere, frankly.
When I lived in British Columbia, naturally a mainstay for visitors was the trip over to Butchart Gardens in Victoria – a world-famous garden and rightfully so, rich indeed with its own stash of thousands of rhododendrons and azaleas, like this Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden in Portland, just 4 times bigger and ten times more groomed and cultivated.
Naturally, there are plants other then Rhodies to slake the thirst for extravagant beauty. Take these pictures, above and below, of Double File Viburnums – how those branches seem to be wearing epaulets of blooms down their long arms, making them appear to be wearing instead of producing them.
These are somewhat groomed for the appearance, yet this plant casually shoots off these blooms in a very regular fashion no matter how determined its pruners are to show off.
Other places in British Columbia and Washington have rhododendron festivals. And many, many other places have small parks – often made by devoted Rhodites (my newest shiniest original English! ) on farmland or just a once-open bit of land where someone tinkered themselves into some stunningly magnificent park, for which they collect money to visit and for which I was always so grateful to pay, just to see those exotics and bizarre rare species of Rhododendrons which eccentrics would specialize in. These were once virtual Hobby Farms, now ranked as parks. And there are more than one thinks.
I recall landscaping an estate in BC – 10 acres set in deep woods with 2,000 year old Douglas Fir stumps whose bodies had been felled in the original flurry of construction at the turn of the 20th Century, filled with a gassy pitch and crumbling peat-like deteriorated cores. One ravine near the home was particularly suited for Rhodies – deep shade with some dappled sunlight. I resolved to fill it with my own brand of a similar park but, naturally, budget concerns worried me immensely.
I consulted my usual nursery and had a line on some great buys of very small starter rhodies – with, naturally, a very restricted base of species and color. It weighed upon me as I drove the back roads of Langley and Surrey, BC, which was where my project was located.
While driving, I happened across a home – just caught by a glance out to the right of my window – where it appeared someone had themselves what looked like their own private nursery. I was curious and always looking for deals and I knew how cash spoke to growers – always subject to the whims of their small market of buyers. I braked, reversed and drove into the drive way.
As I drove in, I noticed a dilapidated older car parked, its door open and some cigarette smoke wafting from the driver’s seat. Walking up the small rise, I also noticed that as far as I could see, the entire nursery was of Rhododendrons. It stretched at least 100 feet to my left and was a good 20 rows deep of large – some huge – rhodies. This was a gold mine of specimens – gigantic and mature plants – and a variety to literally die for. I was nearly shaking after beholding all this because I really knew what I had found. (Hey, you had to be there.)
The man in the car was very old now – 77 – a Russian immigrant whose wife was cooking inside and whose relaxation and privacy included this car to a degree I speculate was pretty intense. He coughed and looked up as I stood outside the door of his smoking chamber and gave a big smile. He was delighted to have company. It made a great start to a long and wonderful relationship. How no one had found this man is still beyond me to this day. I am positive he never would have sold Plant One had I not stopped by – or some other young and enterprising landscaper – there is that.
He had a hothouse where he was cultivating starts – some from seed – and always had. He just loved Rhododendrons. As we ambled around the stock, his 6 foot 6 inch frame would bend over at a particular plant and I would get its very history. He knew each plant like children. It put a near religious reverence to the entire operation, I swear. Some of the newer Rhodies were 3 feet tall, lined up before being separated later to accommodate for their later growth. Meanwhile, some of the others were a true 8 feet tall – worth thousands of dollars each and too large even for me to relocate. I was boggled beyond belief.
He asked if I wanted to buy some of them, getting the hint when I told him I was a landscaper. Naturally, I said yes and awaited his pricing with some trepidation. “Which ones do you want?” he asked. When I showed him a 5 foot high plant in full bloom which any nursery would charge a full $400-500 for, he looked at me, squinted in the sunlight and said:
“What would you say if I wanted $25?”
I laughed and said I would take it, of course. “Well, how many do you want?” was his next question. He then ran off the list, pointing to each plant and never going above 50 bucks for any plants – even the most extravagant and large. It became almost embarrassing and there was no way I was going to rip him off after the efforts he had put in. I gave him a figure that doubled or tripled what he had asked and he started blinking, counting up the dough. I also said I would begin with 100 plants. There was no way I was leaving that field without buying as many as I could.
He was delighted, but I was not done. I wanted to know why he wanted to sell them at such discounts after all the love he had labored over to get them started. I asked him point blank. He was so easy to talk with, it was crazy. We had definitely hit it off.
“Well, I am dying. I never wanted to make some big amount of money off these plants. There was a landscaper I used to sell 3-4 to now and then and it would be some cash for us. I spent a lifetime logging and doing the garden here just became a lot more of a hobby than I thought it would. We had all this land and it’s great land – perfect for Rhodies. If I could make sure the Missus has a few things before I go, I would be real happy. Heck, the land here is worth enough to retire on if we sold it. The Rhodies are just sort of gravy.”
He had a heart condition which gave him about a year to live. He had found out earlier that very week, it turns out. It’s funny how events gravitate towards one another in life. He looked at me with some real big eyes, smiled and knocked me over:
“I was hoping you would come by,” he said.
I felt overwhelmed by events on this boring Wednesday afternoon as I made my way through another torridly-paced business day, lit up on vanity, career concerns and selfish business worries like a junky. Then this tall Russian elderly drink of water delivered that line which I have never forgotten. Among my life’s religious events, I always reflect on this moment as one of those. The suddenness and raw clarity of a synchronicity of need and of something more – maybe just Love itself – made its way deeply into my heart like a bolt of lightning.
A few tears streamed down my face as I drove home that day, in a bizarre mix of gratitude, joy, and simple awe at the outrageous unthinking compliance of Fortune itself. Oh – and I made me a great friend. That should be assumed.
Well, he lived for another two years. I was young and just starting out in landscaping but I had enough dust to provide his grateful hands with about $6,000 in purchases and – Man! – did I ever make out, too. I also bought one of those 8 footers. It took all day for 3 guys to transplant it at the new spread. The timing was stunningly apt – it had just begun blooming and, once planted, was in full flower when their homeowners – a local builder – had their house-warming party. Their gratitude for my work was pretty much off the charts and I won an award for the job – my first ever.
Today, that plant might fetch the entirety of what I paid for all 300 plants I got from Vladimir.
I did not plan to write all that but it’s one of those “Rhodie stories” I have that seemed natural to share. After all, one good turn deserves another, doesn’t it?
(rolls eyes) Here goes Steve with the weird music again……………
It’s about sound. Sound is a sense.
I always loved this guy’s music! Joe Zawinul died at 76 – two years ago now. The live performance included here was done in 2007, I believe, with members who are somewhat different to me. I know most of the guys, just not all. The bassist, Linley Marthe is my version of maybe the ‘best ever’.
Anyway, Zawinul was experimental and a virtuoso. Here he plays with sound like few others. Innovative, different, somewhat jazzy, give it some time and let it grow on you while you listen. The best players in the world played with Joe Zawinul. Please give a listen. You might like it.
It’s funny how many people have asked me what a “Bubble Rock” is. I guess, since I have done so many, it just rolls off my tongue like any other noun. I even have a separate category all dolled up in the “Pages” section where you can see them all on their own. It might need some work. Hmmmm.
A “Bubble Rock”, in my lexicon, is a large rock which has had a hole bored through it. Now, what I like doing then is placing a water pump down near the bottom and sending water bubbling up through the top, thus the “bubble” feature. What gets accomplished is that these rocks then get very much featured, as not only the sound attracts attention, but then so do the innate colors and general features of the rock get highlighted as well. It goes without saying that many of these also have small spotlights on them at night – a groovy and very cool feature which adds a new and different dimension to the highlight. (Bear in mind, in many of these pictures – as always – they are taken as we complete projects. Therefore those little plants will look teensy-weensy. Believe me, they grow, later. We just get too busy to come back – or some fool forgets his camera when he does go back – all those things.)
(left click any image to enlarge)
Their placement becomes important as well. Because of their inherent possible compactness, they can be put into some relatively small spaces. I put many up near entrances to homes, for example, where their bubbling and peaceful sound can be enjoyed by anyone entering.
Others, we put out back – in or around a patio, so that the owners can enjoy those same soothing sounds a bit more selfishly.
Terrible photo, but it reflects the sun so well, I had to include it. It spends much time looking very much like this.
A better look, with a better picture, check those tidy “monoliths” out in the distance here:
These are just a few items of “Bubble Rock” interest. There is always an ongoing urge for the sounds of water in landscaping. These I have found very satisfying to customers, especially with the wonderful new technologies available in coring holes of that length, and through such hard materials. In the end, there is no end of possibilities for an imaginative designer or homeowner. Find a great rock and you’re off to the races, the truth is.
Sometimes we just add to an existing flow of a bunch o’water. This is an extravagance, to be sure, but it sure looks wet!
Among the sites I am most prone to drop into when I need or want a real different and invigorating experience, there are 3 which move me most. The three sites I include here can make a difference in a day, simply by clearing the mind and providing some of the most interesting thoughts.
If you don’t think volcanoes are interesting, then Heaven help you. Having lived near Mt. St. Helens in Washington, seeing it every day from Portland from the highway, and having heard it erupt when working in Vancouver, British Columbia, 250 miles away (”What was that?” “Wow, dunno, must be dynamiting for roads.”) – having been around the North West cluster of geological events, this site offers every possible thing a person could want. Information on recent eruptions and tendencies, plus live web cams one can tune into at any hour of the day, just to see what’s going on in the Alaska Chain. Those web cams are live, by the way, streaming in real time. I watched Redoubt go through some interesting pulsations, complete with a bit of bright orange, last summer. There is some “dome formation” going on at another, usually a precursor to an eruption.
OK, I may as well give up another source of Volcano Love right here -but it’s almost like cheating: http://www.volcanolive.com/volcanocams.html In here, you get Fuji, Mt. St. Helens and many more, including Redoubt.
What can one say about the Hubble telescope that has not already been said? The pictures here on this site are stunning – simply amazing. Anyone with the slightest scientific interest in the world around them, and in the Heavens above us has to look in total wonderment at the glories of space. How rich, diverse and incredibly active and colorful it all is! This should be a bookmark for everyone, just because of the killer wallpapers it can yield.
Louisville is building a fascinating new basketball-primary arena, right out on the riverfront and smack in the middle of its downtown. An Adobe Flash presentation, I can’t really download a ’screengrab’ picture, but I absolutely insist you check it out while this construction project is ongoing. Constructo-philes like me will especially love the cranes and the new roofing being applied. Don’t forget to check out the time lapse scenario presented at the top of the page. You can see every single step of the construction from the initial cleanup, the excavation and the resulting progress, all scrolling at rapid speed. Maybe too rapid, actually. As well, the calender on the left can allow one to scope out the progress at the recorded different months and days as well as times. You can scroll through the months to see all the stages at your own pace.
I absolutely adore this site. Started up by Stuart Robinson, an engaging, popular and smart Aussie from THIS WEBSITE, Stuart’s great original idea and his engaging ways have coalesced a massive influx of garden bloggers, all of whom share the wealth with relish. It is a wonderful way of introducing oneself as a garden blogger and also a fascinating stroll through all the very best gardening bloggers in the world. I should pay more attention to the site, myself, but I sure have zero compunctions about sending folks there. This is the perfect starting point for anyone interested in gardening and in seeing what others do. The tips and information flow as freely as the good vibes and the incredible photography. I feel very lucky to have found Blotanical, the truth is.
http://www.bewaterwise.com/ww_landscaping.html It is exceedingly rare to find such salient and relevant information in such a surprising place. This is put out by a bureaucracy – which, for me, usually means various peter Principled persons battling for air – but the Metro Water District of Southern California really pulls it off. A must-read for people out West.
http://pruned.blogspot.com/ - I just like this place. He seems smart and super interesting. Some candy, I guess.
http://www.shrinkpictures.com/ This is where I go to shrink my photo’s. Easy as pie and loadable directly from my own files, this takes just moments. Like most of us, my camera takes immense pictures. I like that because, when I download them intact, they can be enlarged in great detail. But when I need something less than Gigantic, this is where I go.
OK, shameless plug here. This is a site I had ignored for a while and am bringing back up to speed. Having had a kid who was an avid Heaven’s watcher and, having lived out West, where the night skies can simply be other-worldly and maybe, somehow even closer – I have developed a real “thing” for astronomy and the stars. For those with children, allow me to acquaint you with another resource of which I am in much admiration as well – this is someone else’s site, but it is perfectly constructed, IMO, and very kid-friendly. Check out this: http://www.kidsastronomy.com/
Anyway, I bet a few of those people find entertaining. I know I sure have.
So what does a “landscape project” look like while the work is going on? My sister-in-law, Lisa, is a lawyer. She once visited a site I was on while she was with my brother, Mike, and the family on their way to the Oregon Coast for the weekend. On their way out, they stopped by my project. It was a “makeover”. It had an original huge green front lawn and bushes all over, sort of rustic and wild-looking but was bought by this guy who sold Cray Computers for a living. He had some serious bucks. Well, what he wanted was a massive ‘redo’. When Lisa and Mike and the guys stopped by, we were very industriously tearing the crap out of the whole place. We had someone in every corner, making all those loud and obscene sounds of breaking branches and breaking cement and plastic. Honestly, she came as the “symphony” was reaching a true crescendo! Her son, Beckett looked on with amusement and avid interest, as their daughter, Zoe looked at us like we were all a troop of stark-raving mad jackals. I walked over to say Hi, grease-covered from a bit of earlier “wrassling” with some nasty machine incident or other.
“My God, I could never do that!” were Lisa’s first words. It made my day.
OK, let’s be honest. Naturally enough, at least in my experience, tearing stuff up, for any man, ranks up there with beer, playing sports and children as highly-rated fun. Poor gorgeous dear – What could she know? Beckett got a trip inside the little excavator we ran and he also got into some of the fun by helping Uncle Steve break out some resistant cement and tear up a few more things. With me and him at the controls, I closely watched his interest develop into that well-known fever I have so often seen in the delighted faces of my male personnel when confronted with a machine and an obstacle.
For a great example of all this, I present this series from a project we had in Reno……….one of those “redo’s”…… We take an otherwise finished product such as this:
(Left click to enlarge any picture)
or this:
And then we go “on holiday”, as it were – to this:
And this:
And then they get to know us!!
We try and do our destruction in the quietest of ways but cutting and packing away cement is not something which lends itself to that. The truth is, we wear ear protection ourselves, lol. Don’t get me wrong – tearing things up is still cool, even protected!
Anyway, we generally mention just how loud we will be. However, there are times when they seem not to believe us. Suddenly, shopping looks attractive! Because of the paneled nature of this patio, we were able to get out of there in a couple days – less actually. But leaving it like this means adding stuff:
Replacing 30 tons of cement also implies replacing it with at least that poundage, unfortunately for us. But, fortunately for us -
We have a machine! Guess what!! Yup………….it’s loud too!
Soon, however, the worst of the noise is gone. This all took about 3-4 days, the fact is. The machine had done its job, carting debris away and dumping it, prying up those gnarly slabs of cement and then delivering the base material for what we’re replacing all that with. So far, it’s handled about 40 tons of stuff. Considering the manual alternatives, this allows us to cut the price a bit and to spare our already-beleaguered backs. Finally, the purring of actual men and materials takes place. It can be a fine source for gossip but some protection is required – all too often – for “virgin ears.” Nevertheless, Cory’s love life got broadcast to the general public. The client here was the sister of a very. very dear client of ours who confided in me later that she thought Cory “could do better”, lol, with sly, knowing wink.
Working in tight quarters, such as Ken is attempting here, slipping blind-cut pavers underneath the siding with little or no maneuverable room can yield to some ripe language now and then. Of course, we check to see if the natives are in earshot. We are usually successful at this. Having said that, there have been some pretty funny immediate changes in conversation on “close calls”.
Oh well, after all that hubub, 2 weeks later, what’s the Big Deal? Everyone is happy.
And we get to move on, disturbing yet more people!
These guys were so disgusted, in fact, they had us pave the entry to their driveway!
Satisfying in every respect – heck – we even get paid for all that! Honestly, it’s almost like stealing.
In no set order. Blooms supply the candy, along with many other items in a landscape. Always sort of breathlessly pretty, blooming things have a set limit of endurance – one reason I plant so many shrub roses any more. They are seasonal and fluid, if planted correctly, leaving something blooming at just about any time of the year not named Winter. Here’s some now:
I’ve always had a secret affinity for Smoke Trees, myself. Their subtle blooms really do look like smoke.
The early seed formation of Sumacs are another very under rated beauty, in my opinion. Naturally, landscapers also use them for dual purposes – their Fall foliage is out of this world.
But they can shimmer in the right light and look as good as any bloom anywhere, when happy:
Durable, reliable, easy-to-please and wonderfully fragrant, shrub roses and wild roses are an absolute must-have in my landscapes. These newly-developed cultivars require absolutely nothing special to bloom, look and smell happy and just plain be pleasing.
I think we can all agree that this is a big lump of Phlox. Man, these guys smell fabulous.
Poppies are always good for a solid month, if not more so. I plant tons of these guys as well.
Technically, not a bloom per se, grasses and especially this Purpurea rank highly as objects of beauty similar to blooms. The nicest part about the temporary nature of this “bloom” is the fact that it just gets bigger, rather than smaller as the year unfolds. This was an interesting project, high above Reno. Lots and lots of brick pavers.
We put this Clematis inside an entryway for a satisfied couple and got a satisfied plant as well!
This one is cool, from Vancouver. This time we got the bloomage and the architecture together. Those pots are some heavyweight suckers. Lots and lots of Rhodies and Azaleas here. This is North West landscaping, for real.
Speaking of the North West style, here’s from a project we installed, using about 7,000 Railroad Ties at a massive apartment complex in Vancouver, BC.
Rhododendrons are obviously (as evidenced all through this blog) my favorite bloom. Here’s a few from the Crystal Springs Rododendron Garden in Portland, Oregon. (These enlarge nicely)
Finally – an old favorite. Double File Viburnum. Somewhat “naturalized”:
Landscaping at the lunatic fringe of wealth, like carpeting at the lunatic fringe of wealth, or any other contracting trade, is its own class. Whereas it is a most heavenly possibility to help relieve these people from their overburdened wallets and bank accounts, the results can be disappointing, sad to say. Let’s just leave it at the point that not every encounter with the Uber-Wealthy is a positive experience. In fact, it’s about 50-50, the truth is.
I will absolutely not name names in my blog, other than referring to conversations of a casual or humorous nature. But I can tell of stories where people were strikingly miserable who were wealthy into the hundreds of millions and even billions. They’re people too! They need landscaping and all that stuff. Let’s just say – on a personal level – in many cases people get predictably suspicious of others when they have a lot. There is something to the adage that plenty yields some paranoia. Sometimes, a whole dam lot of it. In some cases, it becomes a threat to your own security. The rich play by their own sets of rules. In fact, many is the time that they make them up!
Anyway, rather than continue this line, knowing nothing we can say will change things that much, just know that merely working for impressive people with “beyond-impressive” homes is not some automatic entree to becoming rich one’s self. You can also go broke working for them – and almost just as easy. Sometimes – through no real fault of your own.
Here’s the third most expensive home in the US: (weighing in at a mere $100 million)
Here’s the pool! That’s marble, by the way.
Now, I admit, that was something of a freak show. In one case, it may well have been the most nervous time I ever spent landscaping. We literally had to transport ourselves in a huge excavator, complete with about an 8 ton boulder in our grasp, for placing in a water feature I regret to say I have no pictures of. The slightest rock or article in the way as we crept inside could have tipped the machine enough to scar the walls – or worse, of course – of the granite facing, there was that little tolerance. In fact, we graded and raked towards a perfect finish underneath, just so we could get that monster machine between the walls without incident. It was a white knuckle experience, right off the get go. In fact, as interesting as this project might seem to an outsider, it was a small version of Hell in many ways, there were so many eyes, including the owners – on us at all times. Nor did we last – lol, there were a total of 5 different companies who worked on the project, jettisoned one after another like players on a chessboard. Some projects are not worth the trouble, frankly. And that’s a tough lesson.
Now here’s a mere 17 million dollar home. Now we’re slumming!! Actually, this homeowner was in the dumps at various times for reasons which were his own, lol. I confess, I never really cared for the dude. He once referred to it as a “dump”. Go figure. Fortunately, we were contracted by the builder, rather than the owner, so we almost got paid completely! Oh – I almost forgot – it’s rare to get all your money with many of the more miserable of these types. What really makes that odd is the generation of higher prices to begin with for the proactive contractor, familiar with their ways. I once literally gave a rebate to a client in this category of wealth because he paid his bill in full. I’m not kidding, either. It may well have been the best few bucks I ever spent too. He sent more people my way than I had time to do.
So here’s what $450,000 worth of landscaping will get you: (bear in mind the more open areas were filled with perennial and annual plants and some very gorgeous lamps and lighting which were articles of beauty on their own at about $250 a piece, copper tulips, in fact, with blooms for lights, all multicolored. It is typical of this site that my pictures are made either during construction or soon – like real soon – after completion. We then move on.)
That waterfall there is a two part deal, branching out at the top and going in both directions. Here is the other side of it:
From the street, here is a longer range view:
Nor were these the only water features! We installed this one up by the front door.
It’s rather hard to make out owing to the fact that our drip irrigation sprayers were on at the time. Those Aspens, by the way, were our additions. 30′ feet high, it was a mighty tight fit putting them in so close to the house. They each weighed a couple of tons and were placed by a monstrous hydraulic tree spade, along with some Noble and White Firs we placed at other locations nearby.
Anyway, here is what the little water feature looked like in process. From this:
To this, then the finished product above. What was funny was that we decided to toss this in as a “toss-in”:
It had one humongous rear patio of stamped concrete:
The stone work was a triumph, however. These walls really add to the overall ambiance terrifically:
The driveway was an interesting mix of brick pavers and stamped concrete.
I really enjoyed the brick work on this project. It worked out outstandingly. Note the Firs in the picture above. Those we also planted, same with the Aspens. Here is a look at the large trees we inserted before we worked on the pavers. One is before we finished the project and the other is after. Of perhaps even more interest is a look at the wild numbers of electrical wiring, pipes and the general traffic in underground services, shown only slightly in the picture just below. Wiring for lights was inserted at the same time as the irrigation piping, irrigation wiring, electrical for the pumps running the water feature (220V) and even power for the heat tape and security gate which goes under the brick driveway:
Stressful at times, yet often resulting in sublime satisfaction for purely selfish reasons as an artisan and tradesman, projects such as these are what we literally die for.
I have a few of these cataloged and I await some pictures from my brother which include other outrageous projects, all of which mixed pleasure and pain in ample amounts – and in every conceivable way.
I’m recirculating this post from over a year ago, as well as making substantial changes to it. The density of posts now – and their length – means many of these get lost in the packaging of the entire blog. This is a post about boulders and big rocks – and the joys and intensity of placing them. I hope no one minds……..
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.
(Left Click all images to enlarge)
Interestingly, in denser concentrations such as the “rockery” retaining system below, they can be used as virtual steps to climb and deal with plants or just to make one’s way up the hillside.
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 anthropomorphic 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 we can go contemplative like those tricky Japanese who always mess with us like -
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 combination’s to simply attract attention, almost always in 3’s – (click this one twice to see the water coming out of the medium guy here)
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! These are particularly interesting inasmuch as they store heat during sunlit days. It takes hours for them to cool down, too. It makes sitting on them during cool evenings yet another experience entirely. I have often said “Warm butts, warm hearts!” Well, OK, but I said it a few times.
I’m going to slip this weirdness into my Landscaping Blog, simply because I can, I guess. Like everyone else in the wide wide world, I like sharing. This has as much relation to landscaping as the Man in The Moon, but…………… I have always thought comedy and those who make it deserve a special place in our lives.
This blogger has decided to take yet more advantage of pure selfishness and display not only his wanton lust for the comic geniuses who have walked the stage and screen, but to date myself as well. Cursed with an excellent memory, I can remember watching such persons as Sid Ceasar, Steve Allen and this guy – Ernie Kovacs – as they first began appearing on television. Yes, we’re talking the mid 50’s, before color TV, even. I remember making an absolute ass out of myself amid my family, laughing pretty much out of control at Don Knotts and Louie Nye on the Steve Allen Show – or Imogene Coca and Howie Morris on Sid Ceasar. But this guy – Kovacs – honestly sent me like no other.
I watched the recent Kennedy Center Honors Show with my Mother where they featured Mel Brooks, among others. He wrote for Sid Ceasar back in the day and, especially with the interviews of the famous “2,000 Year Old Man”, it shows.
It made me investigate the older realms of TV comedy, back when everything was new. You can see the experimental attitude even in this clip. The guys on the set laugh, lol. Live TV was a trip. Sometimes, the regulars at places like Steve Allen or Ceasar wouldn’t be able to finish their lines becasue they couldn’t control their giggles – wonderfully unprofessional and just about a riot.
Anyway, next to Robin Williams, Richard Pryor and Jonathon Winters, Kovacs always represented the height of comedy to me. Subtle, incomplete, almost Lenny Bruce-like in his ability to change skin, here he gives us the famous fop – Percy Dovetails – live from his fabulous Poetry Palace. He’s a Laureate!!!!
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.
) on farmland or just a once-open bit of land where someone tinkered themselves into some stunningly magnificent park, for which they collect money to visit and for which I was always so grateful to pay, just to see those exotics and bizarre rare species of Rhododendrons which eccentrics would specialize in. These were once virtual Hobby Farms, now ranked as parks. And there are more than one thinks.
