As many readers know, I also do a blog for Pond And Fountain World (linked there) where I expose my long-held passion for everything “water” in a landscape and in urban environments in general – world-wide, no less. I get a refreshing look at others’ work, too, exploring the water features they have installed for home owners and businesses, locally. It’s been a treat working there. I meant what I said about how I really do get to explore the fountains of the world, the good ones as well as the bad ones! I always felt design ideas and simple human wonder take off from starting points of history and the relevant notions artists and architects provide us all. There are some absolutely amazing fountains in this world of ours, let me tell you. For example…………not many of us have one of these in their back yard-

“It’s good to be King!”  😉  (this pic from Versailles, France)

(click any image to enlarge, twice for details)

I can also concentrate fully on all the good stuff Pond And Fountain World deal in as contractors and installers of the stuff they sell – including gorgeous retail/wholesale items listed in their home page catalog and presented in full physical glory at their headquarters. There are also other set examples of the installation of naturalistic water features abounding there, complete with plants they offer as well as some pretty amazing fishies.

The people, particularly the owners, George Davis, and his lovely wife Cara, are heart-warming people with ready smiles and those nicely nervous dispositions which give them away as business people. It has been a very good relationship and I have to think they like the “Face” I am helping them present to the world. Those who work there, shipping, answering phones, helping me hugely with the Internet angle of life – such as Rich and Lynne – also do so much to make it a very cool experience.

But they take also great pains to present their “Face”, all by themselves, here at the “world headquarters” of a firm which ships out quite a few products to designers and home and business owners the world over. I have always delighted in walking there and spending time looking at their monstrous supply of gorgeous Koi –

Looks like feeding time!  True story, actually.

I could watch  this large and gorgeous Yellow fish for days:

Moving along now, these guys have begun a small renovation right at the entry to their premises which I particularly like. Naturally, the construction would always attract my attention, and so it is that I now pass by daily, boning up on my Espanol, taking pictures and asking questions. I honestly really appreciate what they are accomplishing.

Whereas before, the entry looked like this:

Oops!  My bad!! This is not Pond And Fountain World!!  This is Quinn, my brother’s niece! How “pushy” of her!  😉  Well, she was thinking about going there, how’s that?

Ahem, back to the entry:

Note the position (above) of the water feature and the composition of walking materials, then compare to this “progress picture” (below) of what is currently going on:

There’s a new surface in town!

Needless to say, the water feature went and moved itself.

And here are a few later pictures, representing what I am growing to feel is some very perfect surface work:

From a strict design perspective the polyglot mix of materials offers a retailer an opportunity to provide instances of various possibilities. The Blue Stone in the foreground may not always be indicated for everyone, especially for those with more conservative tastes. But the workmanship is the sort of thing a guy like me looks at. I love it all.

The cutting and fitting of disparate materials gives an overall very organic tone to this project. The preciseness of the cuts and the uniform sorts of tolerances between the fits makes it something more than it probably should be.

Pretty cool beans, all the way around. I’m a big fan of this stage of work! I know – there’s dust all over, saws operating, different languages singing out – all that stuff. Man, there’s always a ton of garbage too.

Heaven!  🙂

But for pure thrills, watching these projects come together is a highlight reel for me. I think they’re just nailing it.

Very nice work, George, Javier and crew!