Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Gardening In Mid December

It must have gotten over 60 degrees today. I never looked. The sun was out. The wind was calm. The snow had all melted. I had to strike while the ground wasn't froze. Who knows how long this will last. I bet I can make it to the end of the glass bottle edging.



Indeed, a corner was turned. The bottles connected to the path entrance and the first stones for a short retaining wall were laid. Big stones, the no lifting, wiggle into place kind stones. These big rocks were just laying around. I thought I might as well use them since they were the right size for the height of the wall I have in mind.



Now of course I want to pull these other large stones out of the planting bed and into the new wall. I gave them a wiggle test and think I can do it. I'll just ease them on down the hill.



This end of the bed comes to a rather unpleasant sharp point. The lay of the land and the garden access road make this point a little hard to avoid. If I cut back to a curve I end up with a sharp drop at the path entrance needing more steps then I want to put in. I'm going to try putting more glass bottles inside the bed and inside the point with a curve in the bottle edging and see how that looks. Maybe that will soften the unpleasant aspect of the point.



My new short retaining wall needs to go from the end of the dry stack wall in the basement patio up to the garden access road. I will not have enough of these big rocks in close enough proximity to build the whole wall out of single stones. The plan is to use the big stones as accents along the length of another dry stack wall. This one will be short and shouldn't take any time at all to build. I'm even going to be a bad mason and build it without a gravel footing. Gravity and a slight batter will be the super glue.

I'll be needing more rocks. I see a lot of fetching in my future.



From a distance the stone and bottle outline wrapping the cozy cabin is taking on the image of some archeological dig revealing an ancient ship's hull. I have discovered where the ark landed.



A new ark rises from the ruins, ready to sail on the turbulent winds of history.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Love that first photo of Hale Mana (sp?) with the repeating curves contrasted with the repeating triangles! Brilliant!

bev

Christopher C. NC said...

Did something else nice show up accidentally? Spelling is correct.

Lola said...

Accident or not it looks great Christopher. A lot of hard work I'm sure. Be careful of the wiggling.
Do you ever just sit still?

Katie D. said...

Love the bottles - they look like lines of bubbles rising up in a champagne glass. AM planning to steal this idea!! Thanks!