Low Key May Day

We had a very laid-back May Day Weekend.  Saturday was rainy and damp; Sunday was drier as the day progressed.  Venus and Jupiter had a conjunction Saturday, but the mornings have been overcast the last week, which has made any early astronomy difficult.  

Sunday, May First, while it was still damp, I visited the Raptor Center and managed to photograph Parker the American Kestrel.  A little later, Dmitri the Eurasian Eagle-Owl, while apparently grooming some astroturf in his aviary, made high-pitched, chicken-like sounds—I've heard him make deep throated hoots and impatient sounding squawks, but never goofy-sounding, clucking squeaks.   The residents in general seemed to be more animated and vocal than I've observed in some time; I don't know this was related to seasonal changes or not, egg laying and nest building seemed to be last month.

By the time I got back home, the sun was showing more often than not and the back yard began to warm up and dry out.  The closest thing I had to a May Pole Dance was looking at pictures of friend's Morris Dances and the official Todrick Hall video, "I Like Boys."  

Mark's not a religious participant of any flavor, and he's really not into Beltane, so there was no jumping over fires, nor Great Rites at Dawn, or anything remotely like a bacchanal.  Well... okay, in the afternoon I laid out blankets and pillows and a small portable table and—after settling Aiofe on her corner of the blankets—read the opening chapters from "Book The Second" of C.G. Jung's "The Red Book."  I was struck by some similarities between it and part's of Dion Forutne's "The Winged Bull," and how Jung's imagery is filled with binary opposites.  She's obviously read a lot of his work.

Mark did house maintenance and re-painted the back door to our garage.  

Possibly as a result of reading Jung, I did have a quick dream image of a woman in a fuchsia dress, who did a handstand and as a result, her red dress fell over her head and shoulders, and her white petticoats and white stockinged legs were like the stamens and white petals of a passionflower (cue Tchaikovsky Waltz of the Flowers music from Disney's Fantasia...).

"We'll Go Masked."

The last few months have not been conducive to writing, but there's been a recent shift, and I'm hoping that the mental energy spent on various distractions and stressors will be available for more creative endeavors.  

Last week I went to a public outdoor ritual.  The organizers had done a lovely job putting out a circle of candles; light blazed from more candles set up on a long altar.   I was looking forward to it--even if I might have to use an umbrella--but the longer I stayed the more apparent the COVID masking and vaccination check protocols I thought were going to be followed weren't.

After some mental risk-evaluation gymnastics involving the number of unmasked folks there, their proximity, and the efficacy of my own mask, I thought I'd be able to stand on the far side of the circle from the unmasked.  Then an unmasked woman came up and handed me song lyrics, and someone else started perambulating the circle's boundary with his nose poking out over his mask and I realized I'd spend the entire time A) wondering if I was going to catch the omicron variant and pass it to my folks and, B) judging people instead of celebrating the station of the sun.

So I left.  

During the walk home, I wondered if I might have said something like, "Who do I show my proof of vaccination to?" or "Is this a masked event?"  I might have if I had recognized anyone else other than the ritual's leader.  The whole thing reminded me of a passage in Starhawk's "Truth or Dare," where women self-censor and have a Disney Ritual instead of something possibly deeper.

When I got home, there was a garden stake with a lit candle over one of the small tables I use as an outdoor altar set up in the center of the backyard circle.  It was like coming home to a sanctuary, and I spent a grateful moment enjoying the flickering flame.  

Presently, Mark (and the dog) came out; the setup was an outdoor bistro for his dinner.

I went in, attempted to write, and wound up making some edits on a various works-in-progress.

Resting Weekend

I need to start writing my dreams down, lately I've been remembering more of them, at least in the mornings, and some of them feel like they could be stories, or at least like my dreaming brain is trying to come up with stories.

This weekend was a resting weekend.  I met with a critique group via Zoom, but I had not submitted a story for critique, so I only gave critique.  It was pleasant to visit with folks afterwards.  The closest piece I have in my inventory that is critique-ready (sort of) reads more like a first chapter than a complete story, and I spent some time earlier in the week writing the beginning of the next chapter.  

Mark and I worked on a birthday present for my dad--I have to say that Mark has done the lion's share of the work.  We'll see how well the gift goes over when we present it.  COVID has made celebrating with my folks a bit more awkward--we don't want to give them the omicron variant, which is currently being actively spread in the community, so we'll have to mask up in their house and not take a meal together.  It feels like a step backward after the easing of masking requirements in December.  Luckily, most of us are still within about two months of our boosters.  

We took Aiofe to Zumwalt Park, near Fern Ridge Reservoir.  It's a very large area, and dogs can be off-leash there.  Aiofe chased a ball for almost two solid hours.   

In the past, I've managed to photograph a bald eagle and other birds.  This time, the reservoir was drained so much we could walk to the places where ducks and geese had swum among water grasses.  (Some folks were in the news the previous day when they were detecting in the reservoir bed, got stuck in mud up to their hips, and had to be rescued by emergency services.)  Mark did spot a bald eagle, but it was too far away, even for my camera's zoom lens, to get a good photo of it.  

Back home, I trimmed away the sod and grass that had grown over the bricks in the back yard's ceremonial circle.  I think maybe the bricks might be set into the ground too deeply; it seems like I have to trim back overgrowth about every three months.  I guess maintaining the brick cirlce is like getting one's teeth cleaned.  Clearing them is easier when our ground, which is mostly clay, hasn't dried out with the summer's heat.  Working on the circle, my thoughts kept returning to The Day Jobbe, and I had to keep singing We Three's "Center of the Sun" and make an effort to stay focused on finding the brick's edges with my shovel.  

The Day Jobbe has been taking extra amounts of my concentration and vitality lately, and it I have to make an effort if I want to get any writing in in the evenings or weekends.  Or sleep.   One of the drawbacks of working remotely--which I otherwise appreciate in a COVID era--is that location ceases to be as great a cue to transition between work and not-work; when working from home becomes the routine, it becomes more difficult to put down the mental threads of work.

Once the bricks were cleared, I was pleased at how the circle was more prominent.  I didn't feel like holding a ritual right there and then, but I did get a stick of patchouli incense to burn, and after perambulating the circle three times with it, stuck it into the east, and sat down facing east to play my tongue drum.  I've been re-reading Dion Fortune before bed and have been reminded that two skills I should revisit are the ability to concentrate and the talent of imagination.  Bringing the music forth, I was struck with how playing an instrument improves both.

By now it was late afternoon; the setting sun was painting the clouds and eastern hills crimson, and the temperature was dropping.  I took the remains of the incense stick and discovered that I could use it to make smoke rings.

Solitary Wolf Moon Ritual

Monday night was clear enough for me to hold a solitary Full Moon Ritual.  I lit a patchouli incense stick, turned off the lights in the house, and slipped outside.  The moon was in the northeast, but high enough and bright enough that the cherry tree cast shadows onto the back yard circle.  The darkness and overgrown grass made it difficult to see all of the bricks in the circle, but I managed to do conduct a simple 101 ritual.  

I met Mark on a Full Moon; we got married on a Full Moon.  I've harped at lunar eclipses; I've swam naked, the silver light of a desert moon casting its wavy net through the water -- but somehow I went back to the Full Moons of Three Hundred and Sixy-Nine Moons ago and imagined I heard the chanting and laughter of ritual circles of the Carleton College Druids, and fancied I felt the rush of many bodies dancing, hands linked, in a deosil ring.  

Then the moment passed, and it was only me, the circle, and rising grey strands of incense weaving between cherry branches and the Moon.  

Accidental Grotto

Last night it rained.  A marine system must have blown in, because today has been overcast, with thick grey clouds lazing across the sky -- it's like a late September day, only it's mid-August.  Not that I'm complaining:  I much prefer partly-cloudy mid-70's to clear (or hazy) 100's.   If I had been awake, most likely I would have gone outside and held my palms over my head to receive the rain's touch.

Over the summer, the fort in our yard has turned into a kind of grotto.  Originally constructed about a decade ago with some help from my dad, the fort was supposed to be a tree-house without a tree for The Child to play on.  Mostly it's used by the cats as a scratching post--or at least it was until Aoife came to stay and the cats abandoned the back yard.  Sometimes it's a good spot for astronomy for when one needs a boost above the neighborhood rooflines; but it does shake a little, which is not so good for astrophotography.   Mark planted grape vines that scale up the west side of the fort and this year I've trained them along the railings so that the deck of the fort isn't completely overgrown.  Various objects d'art have found places to hang from on the fort:  wind chimes,  a folate head, little bells, a putti head, op-art LED stars, a bronze bat with a polished heart, and, most recently, the old wrought iron dragon sconces we bought almost twenty years ago (and which required newly-purchased Moroccan lanterns).  

It's too low for me to stand up straight under, but I took a cue from Frank Lloyd Wright and place a low, ergonomic gamer-chair and a small side table, and voila! it's a shaded place from which to write.  At least in the spring and summer.  In a few weeks the grape leaves will yellow and fall off, and -- hopefully -- the rains will return, and then the regular deck will be the go-to outside place to write.  

In slightly related news, in addition to hummingbirds, a flicker and a raft of different types of finches have discovered the fountain.  Mark and I watched four finches congregate on top of the flat granite and flutter into the upwelling.

Sunday Morning Writing

Last night I stayed up way too late reading old "Dykes to Watch Out For" (the moving van volume).  As a result, I had some weird dreams about moving into an old house that had its front end on a fraternity row (in the dream it was a cross between 26th Street between Monroe and Tyler Streets in Corvallis and a mashed-up quad from Carleton College and the UO), had its middle in a New York City Times Square shopping mall, and its end and garage near an ocean (which required a twenty minute drive through winding coastal hill forest roads just to get around to the front).   I remember liking the house's interior, but other than a vague recollection that I was starting a new job with academia, I don't remember much.  

The yard is blooming in a haphazard way.  Mark would like more formal plantings, but neither of us has the inclination to plan that far ahead.  It doesn't help that our soil has a high clay content and probably has orchard chemicals in its past.  Mark does have many bonsai and other potted plants outside, and he did build a raised bed, but the effect is more like the back-side of a gardening store than an actual formal garden.  Oh well... Mark has some plans for arbors, so that will be nice.

Mark has taken Aoife on a hike, so I'm writing in the garden circle.  We'll see how long I last before the pollen overcomes me.  Since the dog is gone, I've opened up the garage for cross-ventilation and have just been visited by Cicero's brother, Spencer.  It remains to be seen if our cats will actually venture into the yard -- oh!  and here comes Smokey now, to sit on my keyboard and shed all over everything.  

(On cat session and tea-refresh later)

I'm continuing to study Egyptian hieroglyphs: I've got the uniliteral "alphabet" ones down and I'm slowly adding bi- and trilteral signs to my pile of flashcards.  𓆣 is a trilateral sign pronounced (by Egyptologists, at least) as kheper, and has the same phonetic value as   𓐍 𓊪𓂋 .   I've got a few more on-line classes, and by the end of them I should be able to do a translation of an offering formula.   I'm hoping that I can find the siting of a love poem from the Journal of Egyptian Archæology, translated by Sir Alan Gardiner, and used in Philip Glass's, Akhnaten, (I breathe the sweet breath that issues from thy mouth / I behold thy beauty every day...) but so far I haven't located it (reading ninety-year-old oh-so-polite arguments of how to translate three-thousand-year-old poetry is amusing, however).  Thinking about it some more, I suspect the original is in hieratic and not hieroglyphic, but it would fun to see the original and see how "call thou my name unto eternity, and it shall never fail" was written:  was it "give voice" to my name ?  or "invoke" my name ?  or "speak" ?   Given the ancient Egyptian attitudes toward magic and the written word, I'm curious how how much of the poem is a spell.  

May Flowers

The last iris is blooming out front.  The ones in our backyard have finished their show and only show brown, translucent fists where the flowers used to be.  I do wish they had a longer season--and this year they seemed to be done blooming more quickly than in previous years.

I suspect this year I really will have to get my act together and thin, separate and fertilize the rhizomes instead of just talking about it.  I like our iris's deep purple color, and I imagine that they would be the sort of flower that appears on altars.

This year we have no California poppies in our yard, and I have to make do with the ones that grow up and down and across the street.  Several years ago, we had some growing on our back steps, and I took a time-lapse photo of them slowly opening as the sun rose in the morning sky.  

I like them because they are orange, and because they appear in the cracks in sidewalks, or alongside roads, or in alleys.  I like them because they have a long blooming season, so you can never be sure where you might suddenly come across them.

Some of last year's other poppies managed to self-seed in unexpected places--assorted pots, and a few odd corners in a planter.  They aren't blooming yet, and we don't know what color the flowers will be.  Last year they were mauve, with veins of darker purple shading upward from the flowers' bases.  

These are the more formal kind of poppies, and as I recall, the green outer sheath of leaves over the buds will split in the evening, and over the course of the night fall off.  If the blooms haven't properly popped out by the early morning, they will by mid-morning or so--dropping the sheath.   The color and the shape of the blooms last year was sublime, and put me in mind of flowers an enchanter might grow.

I also enjoy the seed pods afterward, with their secret chambers and hidden structure rattling with tiny poppy seeds

Camas grows in our part of the Willamette Valley, and I wish we could encourage it to grow in our yard.  It's all over a slope about four blocks away, and similar patches grow here and there along the waterways, or near the neighboring slough.   I like it because it's purple, and because the stem structure reminds me of cathedral spires.   Supposedly, you can roast and eat the roots--but I think they're difficult to dig out.

Larkspur, between the Autzen Stadium millrace and the Willamette River.  This photo isn't capturing the gestalt effect of the spiky purple (purple, again) flowers growing in a curtain between the grasses.

We've got some growing along the eastern side of our house, and I'm afraid it's much less striking than the splashes I saw along the jogging and dog-park paths.  It strikes me as the sort of flower a milkmaid or farm girl would gather in her apron and place in a pitcher set on the kitchen table.

Mark and I couldn't figure out what these flowers were.  He thought they might be cone flowers or echinacea.  They're cute, in a mod, 1966 kind of way.  I can see them being made into boutonnières, worn by groomsmen in a meadow wedding.

Ides of Spring 2020

The Ides of Spring have come and (Sunday afternoon) I am writing in the backyard circle, underneath the cherry tree--which has lost most of its blooms in yesterday's wild thunderstorm--and next to the last blooming iris of this season.  The lilac tree nearby is still going strong with its blooms and scent.  I'd like to think that I'm writing between the worlds.

Yesterday evening (Saturday) I managed to catch sight of an incandescent, quadruple rainbow.  Banks of scudding clouds turned the sky a study of every shade between blue and grey.  A thunderstorm cell had passed by, heading east, and the sinking sun cast long rays underneath slate clouds.  I thought about photographing it, but decided that I wanted to enjoy the ephemeral nature of it instead--besides, the photos never do the real thing justice.

Earlier this afternoon, I mowed the lawn; the grass has been growing like crazy with the mishmash days of sunshine mixed with rain.  I started in the center of the circle of pavers and mowed the lawn in an ever-expanding deosil spiral.  I figured that doing so would be my urban version of dancing the May Pole, and I saluted the cardinal directions as the mower passed by them.  I suppose as far as rituals go, it was a ritual cleaning or straightening up.

The sod had grown over many of the pavers in the circle.  The North paver was visible because it's been covered by the labyrinth stone, but the other cardinal pavers were mostly overgrown--and the cross-quarter bricks and the ones dividing the circle into sixteenths had disappeared underneath a tangle of grass and roots.  I'm not sure if the pavers have sunk a little into the ground, or if it's the nature of sod to build up (although, looking at a photo from two years ago when the pavers were freshly laid, I'm thinking they've sunken).

I got a straight-edged shovel and scraped the pavers clear.  Which took more work than I thought.  I had to tap the hidden pavers to figure out where I should be scraping.  I wasn't sure what the best way to edge the pavers was, and ended up lifting the sod and grass up as I used the shovel as a lever with the fulcrum at a paver's edge.

Last year, Cicero especially liked to sit on one of the pavers, and would be temporarily named "Black Cat of the East," or "Black Cat of the Solstice," depending on which paver he sat upon.  This year, as I cleared the pavers, Aoife came up and sniffed each unearthed surface---I hope she wasn't eating the uncovered worms or grubs.

My reward for mowing the lawn and clearing the stones was to get out a folding table, some blankets and pillows and set up a writing area.  Of course, as soon as I did so, Aoife plunked down and made herself comfortable.

During all of this,  Mark looked out the window and said, "Whoa! What did you do?  It looks like you're hiding the evidence out there."  I had to admit the rectangular bricks especially looked like tiny open graves.

But what should I expect, writing between the worlds, summoning recollections, looking out of the interstice?

Irises' Allure

It is the time of the irises.  It is the time of the falling cherry blossoms.

In early April, I watch the irises lift up their swords.  The dark buds sway at the tops of the waving stems and the rain falls.  It rains -- dark day after dark day -- sometimes a mist drifting downward and smelling of the coast, sometimes a torrent from bursting clouds.  On those days, I don't see much of the irises' progress.

I associate irises with the old farm my mother's mother was born on.  They used to have giant bearded yellow and blue irises growing in front of the pioneer farmhouse in the woods near Astoria.  Some of the rhizomes used to grow on the hillside below my folk's house long ago -- taller than we were -- but frost or deer or moles got to them and they haven't been seen for decades.

The irises at our house are planted under a cherry tree, and it's easier to watch the cherry's blooming.  As April progresses, the buds above and below begin to show their tightly wrapped packages.

When the buds open, the cherry becomes a giant swab of cotton candy and the dark purple spears of the irises unfurl.

Smelling the iris blooms is what I've been waiting for.  In the early morning, in the afternoon when it's not raining, I go to them and inhale their scent.  The cherries don't smell so much, but irises have a dark base note, like clove, but not as sweet or sharp; like licorice, but not as floral; like sandalwood, but not as volatile; like patchouli, but not as earthy.  It would be too twee to say "they smell like enchantment."

They smell like the perfume of an unconventional aunt who wasn't satisfied being a Pre-Raphaelite's model, and painted her own queens, knights, magicians and sorceresses.  Or an aunt who mixes her own perfume based on her research of ancient civilizations.  Or an aunt who bakes pungent cakes for obscure holidays, like Gazing Globe Day, or Chimes Night, or The Feast of the Invisible.

Perhaps my difficulty describing the scent is why I like it.  It is strong, it is unique, it is deep -- and by the time we're past the mid-point of Spring, they'll be memory.

Cute Wildlife

Friday afternoon, I was writing outside.  The weather during the first part of the week had been cold and rainy.  As I usually say during boundless stretches of grey:  "we can always use the rain, but if the sun doesn't come out soon I'm going to curl up under my electric throw until the light returns."

Now that Spring is here, we should get more days where there's a terrific mix of sunshine, cloudbursts, and rainbows.

Last Friday was bright and warm, and a good day for writing at Café John (the outside patio table with an umbrella).  The new fountain was on and bubbling, and providing a soothing sonic backdrop.   I had my slippers off and was warming my feet on the deck,  working on the order of scenes in a 7000 word short story (do I go back and forth between the three time periods, or do I just tell the whole thing chronologically?  The first part feels YA, should I just accept it, or should I try cutting out the early parts of the story as backstory that's driving to the last scenes...?)



A flash of yellow caught my eye, and I saw a goldfinch on top of the fountain.  This was surprising because I thought the flowing water would make it difficult for a small bird to find purchase on the stone's polished surface.  The bird splashed around a bit, then flew off to the blooming cherry tree and came back with a friend.  They proceeded to take a bath.   The whole scene was what I would have called "Terminally Cute" in my Reed College days, and what Mark and I usually call "Oogie-Boo!"






To clarify, they weren't being Snow White Disney Birds Cute, nor were they being Flower Fairies Twee.





I grabbed my camera, set the ISO to 1600, and snapped a few shots from just inside the sliding patio door.  Reviewing the photos later, I discovered that the camera can resolve drops of water flying through the air.










There were no mystic signs of ornithomancy later.  Or sudden appearances of elegant ball gowns, either.








I'm sure once the cats overcome their fear of the new dog and venture once again into the backyard, they'll be quite pleased to discover the new water-powered cat-feeder.

Finishing The Water Feature

 Saturday, Mark and I managed to move the stone into place.  Origianlly, I was going to try to tie the stone to a long beam of wood and use either end as a lever to walk the stone into place.

When we tried to lift it, it became clear that the stone weighed too much for two men in their mid-fifties to move by themselves.

Mark quite reasonably pointed out that the stone was already on the wagon (the sides of which were being destroyed by all the levers I was using to try to wiggle it into place, and that we already had it on a long plank that we could use as a slide and let gravity do most of the work for us.

So, we pulled the wagon over the lawn (which left divots in the grass) and got the wagon and the stone ready for sliding.  With some careful maneuvering, and levering, we managed to get the stone in place on the center column of the fountain's basin.

 Nobody had fingers or toes or tails or paws crushed.  (Yes, I did have to relocate Smokey, who had to sniff where the stone was going to come to rest.)

Once it was upright, moving the stone was fairly easy.  I rotated it with the smooth, polished side facing south, on the theory that it would reflect sunlight.  I'm not entirely sure that it will, as we have not been around at the same time as bright, direct sunlight in the yard.

Then came the difficult task of snaking the water pump's hose up the hole drilled into the stone.  I'm going to guess the water in the basin wasn't too much warmer than 45F.  I could probably stand to have my hand in the water for about ten seconds before muttering half-enunciated oaths, whipping my hand out of the water, trying to dry it off, shake it, and simultaneously shove it under my armpit to try to warm it up, all the while cavorting around in a little tight circle.

Eventually, I fed most of the hose into the stone, and was ready to turn the pump on.  Water flowed over the stone, and Mark played a version "Time To Say Good-bye" he had queued up.  I fiddled around some with the setting on the ball valve regulating the flow through the stone in order to find the sweet spot where not too much water flows out and then splashes out of the basin.

"Go get some colored rocks," said Mark, who did not want to come with me.  So I went to the landscaping place and started looking for rocks to cover up the plastic cover over the basin.   After some casting about, I found the bin of turquoise colored "pebbles," and began... sorting them onto a cart.   It did occur to me as I was selecting rocks based on on more-polygonal/less-spherical, more darker-blue-or-green/less-pastel that possibly I was being anal-retentive about rock choice.  Eventually, I got some black accent pebbles (which were more pebble-like and less very-large-ice-cube-like).

I sort of had a problem in that I wasn't sure exactly how much rock to get:  too little and the tacky, industrial black plastic would show; too much, and I'd have to figure out a use for the extra.  Also--as Mark pointed out later, if I got too much I ran an increased risk of overloading the basin's cover and having everything collapse on top of the water pump.  I wound up getting some fractured granite scales as well, on the theory that the sharp shapes would be an artistic contrast to the rounded pebbles.

 About ninety minutes later... I was heading back home with a car full of rocks.

Because I wanted the rocks to look nice, and because I didn't want them to get too much dirt and mud into the basin's water, I washed the rocks when I got home.   The water out of the garden hose was only marginally warmer than the water in the fountain's basin, and after a few minutes of rubbing the stones free of dirt with a cloth, I settled for soaking them for a few minutes, then spraying them off.

At some point during all of this, it started sprinkling, and I got some tea.

I placed the rocks around the stone with a growing sense of having gotten carried away at the landscaping place.  Mark came out an mentioned the weight of the stones, and also expressed some surprise that I had gotten more than one color of rocks.  He thought I was going to do some sort of yin-yang pattern.  I had a vague notion of quartering the turquoise stones somehow, or edging them with the granite scales, but the effect in practice wasn't as cool as I thought it would be.

I ended up concentrating the black rocks beneath the polished face of the stone, as if they were the dark continuation of a waterfall streaming off of it.   I think the effect sort of works.

Looking at the finished product, I concluded that the fountain looks "elemental," and "zen," ... which means that I'll probably be fiddling with the stones for a while until I can get a look that's more cultivated.   Very likely, I'll remove a few stones so the feature looks less cluttered or like a landscaping truck dumped a bunch of pretty rocks out of a truck and more like the stones were placed on purpose.

The sound of the water falling through the rocks, however, is perfect.  The next step is wiring the house with some outside outlets so Mark will feel less anxious about electrical mishaps.

New Fountain

Over the years, I've attempted to have some kind of water feature in our back yard.  I like them because the stillness of the liquid when the fountain is off provides an anchor to the landscaping, and also the sound of falling water helps to mask things like the rituals (or whatever it is) that the eight-year-old girls are doing two houses over.

For a while we had a little solar-powered fountain, which was nice in a bird-bath kind of way, and which the cats appreciated during the hot summer months, but which was more of a novelty than an actual water feature (also, it required a lot of fiddling with to keep the solar panel pointed at the sun).

When the large plastic, semispherical planter we'd been using for a fountain basin fatigued and cracked, we did without a fountain last summer, and the cats drank from a metal, shallow, shell-shaped basin (which was fine until I started to wonder if any lead solder or something decorative was leeching into their water supply).

This year I finally got enough gumption (and savings) together to get a more industrial-strength fountain.  I'd been skulking around a local landscaping shop, scoping out things like basalt columns and fountain basins for a few weeks.

Saturday, I dragged Mark to the shop to help choose a rock and fountain.  My fantasy would be to plunk ten-foot tall basalt columns at the cardinal points of the yard and install a baptismal-font sized column in the west with a brook-sized current of water springing out of it.  But, as just one ten-foot tall basalt column A) costs something on the order of $2000.00 and B) weighs easily two tons, and as I have not mastered Merlin's spells for moving the menhirs of Stonehenge, it seemed rather impractical.  Even a foot high basalt "bird bath" weighs around 300 pounds, so I ended up with something lighter (at an estimated 200 lbs) -- half a basalt column, cut at slightly inclined angle and polished.  It has a hole through its long axis for water to well out through.  I'm expecting the polished face will reflect the sun and be useful for telling the solar time.

The shop sold plastic reservoirs that are sturdy enough to hold about 500 pounds, a water pump, some tubing, and various piping features.  It all weighed in beneath our car's carrying capacity, and soon Mark and I had all of the stuff home (well, okay, we still need to get some fist-sized decorative stones to put around the column, but that's for later).

We had watched the guys at the shop load the column into the car and privately wondered how many years of lifting 200 pound rocks would result in a slipped spinal disc or something.  In our driveway, after a few abortive attempts at rock wiggling, we looked at the column, sitting on its side in the back of the car.  It didn't look impressive, and driving around town with a essentially a stone battering ram wasn't high on my list of things to do.

After about ten minutes of wiggling, fiddling around with various planks and levers of wood, we managed to maneuver the stone into a position where it would perch on the car's tailgate.  Then we carefully managed to slide it down a plank and into a waiting wagon (yes, we braced the wagon's wheels so it wouldn't roll forward).

Mark announced that he wasn't going to move the stone any farther without some proper equipment... which is probably wise, considering that various lumbar and scapula parts of my body reminded me Sunday (the day after) that they're over half a century old.  Unfortunately, I don't know a troupe of burly men who want to do a historical reenactment of moving Stonehenge stones.

The next step was fountain basin placement.  The original site I'd had in mind, right off of the deck's steps, was too cramped.  I thought about placing the basin due west of the lawn circle, but that plan was vetoed because it would harm plants and probably become a magnet for arbor vitae tree needles.  So it ended up next to the bonsai shelter.

Sunday.  Since our entire yard tilts along a southeast to northwest axis, I had to dig out a little bit of the ground to get a level site for the fountain.  Mark wanted me to put down pavers, too, on the theory that they would help to keep things level when the ground shifts because there's a 200 pound basalt column and (8 inches X 17inches ^2 X pi = 7263 ^3 inches ) 262 pounds of water on top of it.

One trip to the paver store later, I was digging a hole, and then pounding the bottom flat with a concrete paver and singing the Ewok Cooking Song, "Lukan Dukan Lu-la ..." And digging some more.  And pounding more.  And then laying pavers down and seeing if they were level.  Then picking them back up.  And pounding the ground (which has a high clay content).  And pinching my fingertips.  And singing some more.  And leveling.  And pounding.  And ripping a cuticle off of my thumb.  And trying to find more places to put the extra dirt.

At some point my rendition of the Ewok Cooking Song was interrupted by Mark, who said that he and the child were going on a walk.

Eventually, I managed to get the hole as deep enough, and as level enough, and wide enough to put the basin in.

Of course, I had to fill it with water, plunk the water pump in and plug it in.  No one got electrocuted or anything -- and when I turned it on, The Child said, "It looks like The Bellagio."  Mark started humming, "Con Te Partiro (Time to Say Goodbye)."

The installation was not finished, but it was getting dark, Mark wanted to go look at freshwater mammals at Delta Ponds, and my hands were hurting.  So we paused.  The next steps are getting the proper rock-moving tools, hiring an electrician to install an outside electrical outlet (to allay Mark's fears of some electrical catastrophe), and adding some decorative rocks to the top so the basin doesn't look like a giant's lost watering can spout came loose and fell into our back yard.