It's an overcast, cool day, and DIA is altering its flight patterns, diverting planes over our house. There's weather around, high winds out west, and a low ceiling, all combining to hamper descents. We've been working in the yard a good deal this past week; wet snow fell most of last Friday and Saturday, and Sunday was a gloriously beautiful day, the snow gone, weeds coming up with little to no effort. A friend of ours, who'd been staying with us following surgery, was recovered enough to start plans for a small pond/fountain (it's more than a fountain, less than a pond, but I have my afternoon light on water and could not be more pleased), so a hole was dug at the base of one of the plum trees and we spent the better part of last Sunday and a smattering of our weekday hours creating a water feature.
One thing to note about our landscaping - hardscaping-what constitutes the borders & the "skeleton" of the yard. I made it a policy (I say that word with some caution, as it's not as if papers were signed or anything) to only use materials that were found or given to me. No money could exchange hands when it came to the structure of the garden areas. The only exception to this was the raised bed S. built two years ago. It's wood. We bought the wood. And the nails and gravel.
But for the most part, the garden is a jolt of randomness in a world that praises symmetry. There are no straight lines. The hardscape ranges from the ordinary to the extraordinary, a..k.a. The Stories in the 'Scape.
Like the bricks that I stop to pick up six, seven years ago from the side of 40 th, in the back of the Rock Drill Works. I had my trusty Purple Pony Ford pick up, and the bed was scratched to sh*t from hauling. Just the way I like it. I drove past a pile of what looked to be white brick in piles near a defunct loading dock then turned around and went back.
After about a minute of loading, a man shows up and asks me what I'm doing: "I'm collecting landscape materials for my garden." Busted.
"OH!" says friendly, small, suddenly smiling man.
"Here let me help you!" he says, and we greet one another.
(I'm sorry to say I don't remember his name.)
He jumps down from the loading dock and starts helping me load the bricks. "I'm just here cleaning the place out. I'm demo."
"Demo," I repeat. "So you're tearing the place down?" A little catch in my gut.
"Naw," says this very nice man covered in black grime. "Just the machines and stuff. And all the materials." He had an accent, but I couldn't place it. East coast, but twangy.
"Can I have this piece?" I say, kicking the dirt below a lovely large piece of brick and concrete. "I love this piece."
"Well sure," he says, walking over. "But we'd better dig it out." Before I can protest, the spry man leaps onto the dock and disappears. I load a couple more bricks, make room for the larger new find in the truck bed.
He returns with a short handled shovel and digs out the brick and concrete, now visible enough to see that it was once the corner of something, a small building perhaps. I reach to help him lift it but he shoos me away, picks it up easy, and gently places it in the truck.
"Thank you so much," I say. "I think that'll do me."
"Good luck with the garden," he says.
"Happy demo!" I reply, and drive home.
People often ask me where the lava rock came from that serves as a border for some the back yard beds. "They're clinkers," I say, then explain. Clinkers are formed from burnt coal deposits that solidify and collect on the boiler tubes at Cherokee's power plant. The "rocks" that form vary in color from terra cotta to gray to mustard to a mauvey purple. Striations of color are not uncommon; the largest piece we have is a combination of many colors, with silvery moss growing in crevices. Our neighbor, Moses, who has worked at Cherokee for more than 20 years, gave us the clinkers soon after we moved in here. They were the first hardscape in the yard, and part of what formed my "policy" for the future structure and art. The clinkers are light, but deceptively sharp, like their oft'mistaken look-alikes can be. Misstep while weeding and fall on one and you'll end up with a terrible scrape. But I love the way they look with lamium cascading over them, and they add another story to the 'scape series.
Moses also gave us an old claw foot tub taken out of his Uncle's place. We've been planting in it ever since, and about four years ago hit on zinnias-they love the full sun and there's nothing happier than a tub full of splashy colored zinnias. They're the painted lady of flowers. With the addition of the deck (late last summer) and fountain, however, the focal point of the yard had changed. It was time to move the tub.
Ignoring my protestations, our recuperating friend insisted the two of us could move the grand old tub. He, Charles, was pleasantly surprised by the condition of the tub itself; we kept telling him we wanted to put it in the house, and he would poo poo us, say that he saw rust around the drain plate. Once we took out all the dirt, his tune changed, and he commented on the feet, how unusual they were. Emblazoned with capital 'B's. We put the tub into the garden proper, a couple feet from the north end of the raised bed, mounting it on bricks. We moved it, all told, about 12 feet, but it felt like 12 yards. My lower back was wondering who was driving the bus.
I like where the tub is now. It needs a repainting and I need to get a Philips and take off the drain plate and the hanging stopper arm. Next weekend is the Denver mulch drop, so we'll get us at the crack of dawn and drive over to Havana and try to get a load. I can mix that with compost from the bin that I'm dissembling (I'm taking it apart this summer and building a new one; the squirrels destroyed the liner and the pallets were in poor shape) and a bag of ECO soil and fill the tub again. It was time to replace that soil anyway; we redistributed it around the fountain and softened the grade dropping to the deck.
I've got a lot of planting to do, including learning what I can about plants used in water features. Our mini-pond will get enough sun that some degree of algae(al) and bacterial mitigation is required. There can be no chemicals. When we let the cats out, and we can watch them, they love lounging by the fountain; most of the time they sit at the back door and watch the birds come in for a drink. A pair of blue jays are nesting in the cottonwood right above me (I'm writing this on the deck), and earlier I watched a robin prune by the water's edge. They're calling for rain/snow mix on Monday, but nothing like the storm of last week. I doubt we'll see that kind of craziness again this year. Spring might stay awhile.