In the loop...
After having a foster child here for respite for the past week, I'm getting ready yet again to head to Vancouver for the weekend. There's going to be a rather large surprise birthday party for my son-in-law at Gwen's. Sean's mom is arriving from Toronto tomorrow to take part in the festivities and all of the west coast family members will be there. Yippee...more grandson time with nanny!
I've been busy in the garden since I got home from Jayne's, despite several rainy days doing their best to put a damper on things. Regardless of the weather, Casper looks forward to his long beach walks twice a day and so do I. He looked like he'd been dragged through a hedge backwards yesterday, after swimming through seaweed, scouring the rocks for crabs and nosing about in a freshly edged muddy border of the garden searching for wood bugs. He's not fond of baths, but we didn't have a choice in the matter and once it's over, he loves to preen. Just look at my wispy dandelion of a dog, all clean and fluffy. Good dog, Casper...
This is completely off-topic, but after Sandra commented on a flickr photo of mine, showing some piled rocks and saying that it reminded her of the land art of Andy Goldsworthy, I decided to try my hand at doing something similar on the gravel patch in front of the fountain. Here's Andy's handiwork...
His stones are cracked to follow a continuous line around the spiral and even though another flickr member told me how to do this by hitting the rocks with another rock, I couldn't manage to come even close to breaking one. I gathered basalt from the beach and placed a heart-shaped stone in the center. I started scratching the stones to imitate the crack lines of Andy's and when it stops raining, I'll be able to work on the rest...
"Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination." Mrs. Earle 1897
I received a surprise card in the mail, all the way from Sanday, one of the Orkney Islands. Beth found it at the little post office there, when she rode her bicycle to mail some letters. She knew that I would love it and it's easy to see why...
Beth and I met after leaving comments on each others flickr photos and I find her blog fascinating...she writes about living on a small and very remote island. Small, yes, but they have green wellies at the post office!
While searching for rocks for my spiral project, I found the driver end of a golf club and four golf balls...not your normal flotsam and jetsam and the joke is that they floated there on the Golf Stream...
So much to do, so much I want to do and not enough hours in the day...and that's a good thing!
I love your rocks, even without the cracks! I don't know if I'd have the patience to break all of those anyway!
Casper is crackin' me up! He looks like a big ball of fluff in this photo!
Posted by: jes | July 19, 2007 at 10:32 PM
Caspar's all "I'm all fluffy and pretty, please don't take my picture, argh!"
Good job with your beach art work. Look forward to seeing the finished result.
I shall check out Beth's site. The world needs more bloggers from little islands!
Posted by: Fi | July 19, 2007 at 11:04 PM
I love your "art work". Especially the heart shaped stone in the middle. The perfect spot to put it of course! I hope you have a positively lovely weekend!
Posted by: Marie | July 19, 2007 at 11:30 PM
Great "Goldsworthy" have a lovely time in Vancouver.
Posted by: carolyn | July 20, 2007 at 09:13 AM
This is stunning what you are doing with the rocks. Casper looks like a cuddly marshmallow dog. You have been on the go! Have a fun time in Vancouver. Love, kr
Posted by: Jenny | July 20, 2007 at 09:01 PM
Your rock-art . . . ROCKS!
I can't wait to try that in my garden . . . wow!
Posted by: Becky | July 23, 2007 at 02:35 PM
PS: i have a new URL . . it's my old URL
Posted by: Becky | July 23, 2007 at 02:36 PM
Just dropped by to say how much I loved (and appreciated) my Seven Happy Fishes. Thank you very much! Your green wellies look very much at home here.
I love Andy G's work, and lived for a time very close to his home in Dumfriesshire. There is one of his cairns (http://tinyurl.com/29k48f) just outside the village where he lives, and I loved to see it as we drove past.
There are a number of Flickr groups inspired by Galsworthy, and especially rock-balancing
http://tinyurl.com/yqxbmu
I think Galsworthy informs my desire to populate my Windswept acre with cairns - it seems unlikely that anything much will grow on it, so maybe Art is the way to go :-)
I like your "Galsworthy" very much!
Posted by: plumbum | July 24, 2007 at 04:06 AM
That is so funny to find the club head and the balls! The rock formation is very nice and I would like to see the rock cracking experiment! ( off to google Andy G) Did you get my email?.
Posted by: Gina | July 29, 2007 at 11:42 AM
oh hello, your spiral is great and the stones with stripes are really pretty. art in the garden... is there anything better (except Caspar)? big hug sent to you from our new home from all of us (Friederike! Lamb Chop, 2 cats and 2 "humans")
Posted by: Friederike! & Sandra | August 11, 2007 at 10:24 PM