unearthed at a corporate project earlier this season; it’s a section of irrigation pipe fitted with umpteen drip emitters for a bed of groundcovers. running microtubing to every plant wastes materials and discourages plants from spreading. I replaced 15 feet of this pipe, with over 200 emitters (!) with a single popup.
suddenly, it’s spring. signs everywhere…maples in flower; drifts of crocus punching through last season’s leafs; the all-day racket of birdlife.
cleanup cannot wait. some grasses are greening up and with tulip foliage getting tall we have just scant days to shear our beds indiscriminately.
first bee sighting. in crocus alba, author’s garden.
and neither do we. stabilizing the steep slope in the D. garden.
Late winter prairie, rendered in silhouette on Sweet Pea’s Passenger Flank
I’m using this nice stretch of days to line up materials for spring installations. today, the stoneyard. though it’s so familiar after years of exploration, I always find myself rooting beneath the massive cottonwood trees that dot the property…especially along the ditch that cuts the site into halves. big trees act as traps for odds and ends that get enveloped by stock and forgotten. so in a way, the material emulates a tree which itself grows outward, the newest tissue encircling the old.
today I found a couple of treasures. one, an old palette of vintage masonry blocks stained dark by tannins in the decades of leaf fall. two, a box of stone shafts that i believe are cores left by the boring of large blocks. similarly stained. finally, two hollow ceramic floor tiles from the demolition of an old factory or station.
these will become garden ornaments. and when they do, I’ll write about it here.