What a glorious day! I spent the whole of it at the edge of the laybrinth, soaking up the sun, sketching in my ELP sketchbook, and working on the small improvements listed in the last post.
First of all, the easy changes I made:
Here you can see the planting of the ferns and the new position of the planter/lighting fixture.
And here, without any prologue, is the new vesica piscis of the labyrinth. Just remember, you asked for it:
Imagine this covered with Irish moss.
A different view:
And finally, the long view:
Well, it’s not a mound any more. Whether it’s any less distracting is up to the participant, I suppose.
I’m off to a) sketch my brains out, and b) do a little work on the labyrinth.
Some of it’s just easy stuff: planting the ferns over at the little earth dam, and moving the planter lights on the wall from just behind the north point to a more symmetrical position further east. Craig noticed that the other night, that now everything is in place, the very first lighting fixture I put up should be somewhere else. Also, a thank you is in order to Dawn and Terry: I had found a nice little hurricane lamp thing on a stand out at Target, and I thought two would be nice. Target had only one, and the intertubes said Carrollton had one. I emailed Dawn, and they brought it down last Monday. Terry claims it’s his Lichtenbergian Assignment L.08.9; I’m willing to accept that.
But there is one hard thing:
::sigh:: The mound in the conjunction of the paths. The little vesica piscis-like left-over shape. What to do? On Friday night, the general consensus was that I should get rid of it, i.e., flatten it out. As it stands, it kind of dominates the landscape. The whole thing would be prettier if it were flat.
In its defense, I meant for it to be an interruption, a barrier. When you stand at the entrance, it blocks your path to the center (even if the Path were not buried and inaccessible), a Holy Mountain, perhaps? There are reasons to leave it in place and just coax the Irish moss along to cover it quickly. Indeed, part of its problem is that it’s so ugly. I’ll try weeding the grass out first. The bits of pottery were for visual interest, but without heaping mounds of moss, they just look trashy.
At any rate, I won’t get to that until later this afternoon. If you have any interest in saving it, leave a comment. Or come by and throw your body athwart its holy summit.
Of course, if I had stayed with the old geometric style layout, I wouldn’t have this problem. There is still something very strong about this version that appeals to me. Alternate universes are a bitch, aren’t they?
This is not so much about the labyrinth as it is a new app I got for the iPhone called Pano. It allows you to create panoramic photos on the spot, to wit:
I like it.
In other news, last night was fabulous out there. I got back from Atlanta around 2:30 and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening just sitting and soaking up the considerable ambience. I will probably do the same thing this afternoon and night. I’ll do an update on the landscaping progress I’m making and still hope to make.
No new paint yet, but I have broken my resolution not to buy things:
I went to buy a couple of new tubes of paint and ended up with the paint and a new sketch box easel.
Wait, please, I can explain.
I hate painting flat on the table. As my hands and eyes regain whatever it is they had back when I did paint, they’ve rebelled against making do with my drafting table. Also, I have been mulling over a series based on the labyrinth, and that means en plein air, and that means hauling all my crap downstairs. This gizmo solves all the problems. See the little drawer on the side? Isn’t it cute?
And the easel part actually extends below the edge of the table, which is more than perfect. So it wasn’t exactly the kind of purchase I was forbidding myself from making.
Besides, I already bought $300 worth of ferns for the labyrinth last Saturday.
Shut up. I don’t have to listen to you. You’re not the boss of me. I have a painting I have to finish.
later
This is what finished looks like before tomorrow morning when I look at it again and decide to futz with it:
The comments, as always, are open.
The weather was glorious and I was out in it most of the day. I built a fire very early this morning and kept warm as I wrote the previous post. Then before lunch I headed out and bought some accoutrements for the yard: ferns of various dispositions to begin placing around the periphery, and some Irish moss, which I don’t think is a moss at all but still is a pretty ground cover. That’s going onto the little mound in the middle of the labyrinth. I will keep it watered and let you know how it survives.
Then I did a lot of small things, none of which need concern us here but one:
I went over to my brick pile and began extending the brick edging from the lower part of the yard.
What you see here is where the bricks define the entrance to the “men’s room.” It’s an intriguing gateway; this photo doesn’t do it justice. It just leads into a quiet area next to the bamboo, and all it is, is a corner of chainlink fence.
But the impact of the brick edging is very nice indeed. The two clay pots hold candles, to help light the unsteady their way. (There are other clay pots hung from the fence within the grotto itself.) You will also notice the terracotta pipe, the lingam, guarding the entrance.
I will have to set the bricks into the ground at some point. Spring break is coming up.
The chimes have just struck noon, and the carillon has played its selection of Lenten hymntunes. I am back in the labyrinth, soaking up the sunshine.
My intent is simply to relax. There’s nothing pressing on my agenda, no deadlines, no concerts, no Literacy Task Forces. So I’ll read, and do crossword puzzles, and probably nap.
I could work on the yard, but I think I will put all of that off till another sunny day.
What’s still left to do? Oh, plenty. Now I have lots of areas that need grass or moss or something covering the ground. The mound in the center needs a ground cover, since the bluestar stuff I planted earlier died, despite being featured prominently in the new Southern Living as having been used in a lovely Buckhead garden by one William Tingle Smith, of whom I could tell you some charming tales from our Period Dance days.
There’s the putative dance floor, which as you can see I have tilled but not yet leveled or shaped. This requires a lot of thinking and looking and probably drinking.
There’s multiple plantings of various ferns, but I really want to wait until it’s warmer before attempting all of that.
I have cut and sanded, but not stained, new armrests for the old glider. Also, I need to find nuts and bolts to attach them, which was not an automatically easy thing to accomplish when I went to Home Depot last time to accomplish it.
There is still the drilling of pavers for the little plinths out in the labyrinth. I got one finished, and then cold and rain sidelined that operation.
There’s this little deal. These are the leftover bits of pavers after I lopped them for the curves in the labyrinth. My plan is to drill a small hole through them and thread a rod of some kind that will hold them up, then install it as a sculpture somewhere in the complex. It’s an idea stolen directly from Andy Goldsworthy. He, of course, would not be drilling holes or threading rods, but then again he’s an international artist of some integrity. I’m just decorating my garden.
More as it occurs to me.
Later in the afternoon:
Cat with Platonic solids.
One way to deal with the Dakota:
Just cover it up. The ochre stripe came to me last night as I tossed and turned. The “sky” area may go Prussian blue tomorrow.
In other news tonight, I almost had a solution for the center omphalos of the labyrinth. We had stopped at a home furnishings place in Buckhead, and there was a glass bowl thing with a hole in the bottom that would have been perfect: about an inch thick, and gold. Alas, it’s too small. I shall have to take it back. But I’m really thinking that the central bowl should be gold. That presents its own problems, of course.
