Thursday, July 21, 2005

the doing

hi citrus

i started my back"yard" landscaping project after you left. i must have dug 300 rocks out of that 10 x 8 space. can i just say that i hate the contractors who "landscaped" this poor little yard. i think what they did was take a big cement mixer added 1 part filthy dirt (not to be confused with soil: the life giving product of mother earth) .5 parts trash ( it is really exciting to pull pop cans, nails, bandaids and plastic bags out from under the rocks and dirt. it feels a little like wining a twisted raffle.) 2 parts small rocks, 2 parts big ass rocks. Then they mixed it together, poured it behind the retaining wall and covered the whole load of crap with bark.

but it's been fun to get up there sweating my ass of making something really lovely. we've built a smaller retaining wall in a half circle shape about 3/4 of the way back and have moved some of the existing bushes. i love it. almost homey. oh, and we tied that lovely smelling tobacco plant up so it stand tall and proud. it still smells great.

remember all of the outdoor projects we used to think up and spend all day or week working on? everything we did was for the experience of doing it. it never mattered what then end product was. we always felt completely pleased with our selves for taking on such impossible tasks and loved to recount them to anyone who would listen.

Here's some that I remember. You weren't part of all of them.Sometimes i had to hang out with the neighbor kids. What do you remember?

  • living outside for a week. showering in a wheel barrel. peeing outside.
  • cobble stone steps down a 20 ft incline to the creek.
  • building a 100 ft frankenstein head only visible from an over head plane. we called the paper to get them to come and take and aerial shot. they didn't.
  • building complicated forts that cover every bit of real estate on the lawn
  • tying everything that had wheels together for the ultimate kid vehicle.
We didn't make it to the KEXP bbq (are you listening yet?) but here's a cool picture. i like it. this is the time we live in.
photo by: william anthony

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