Remember the red water faucet that graced this prominent space with its presence? Later painted "Black Fox"? Well, that camouflage wasn't good enough for my friend Ken Richardson. He thought a sculpture was needed. He took a discarded piece of the container....probably part of a window that was cut out.....found the perfect rock on the gravel bar in front of the house.....had a piece of hedge he had been saving for something very important.....and saw a discarded bed frame in a country ditch & called on his wife Shirley to help haul it into the truck for the metal that was required. He calls it a water feature.
And.....like father, like son. Ken's 92 year-old-father decided I needed a bench in front of the house....... had been saving that piece of wood for something very important.......fixed it up and sent it my way......and I now have the perfect place for some heavy duty meditation. And plenty of subjects.
So........I now have a bona fide place to park my truck......vents in the roof of the storage container.......a metal door on the house-end of the container which makes for a speedier and somewhat more civilized entry........great shelves on the inside.......a hand-rail/cable combination on the ramp......a metal door to get into and out of the crawl space.......a gorgeous metal roof vent cover.......and the participation, once again, of some great friends and family.
Michael Mardis......applying the one-of-a-kind, architecturally-designed, state-of-the-art vent fan cover........to replace the previously 24 hour-a-day racket-flappers that caused me many sleepless nights. Phew.
And the crew from Advanced Welding who put up the railing and storage container door in record-breaking time without a hitch. All things should go so smoothly.
I know. It's not everyone's dream......but that metal crawl space door that Michael installed is definitely a work of art.....and guaranteed to keep any love slaves that I happen to adopt safe, secure, and tremendously obedient.
None of the self-help books I've read have sufficiently explored the positive aspects of the solid roof vent cover.......but, I swear, I'm a much better person now than I was.
Pretty slick, eh? Other than a very short period of time back in the mid-seventies when the family was able to sustain a cleared-out garage..........this was the first time in my adult life that I've not had to scrape off my windshield every dang day in the winter. I would highly recommend it.
There is a plan in the works to extend that nice gravel all the way to edge of the carport....and to paint the door black.
At some point, I seem to remember using this space to curse crab grass, non-growing Buffalo Grass.........and the whole *&#$:*(:@+! process of landscaping that non-river-facing area of the site. I have recently entered into a new phase of confronting this difficulty and have had some really good help and plenty of natural resources. See boulders above. Jamie (of the prior tree-planting operation, John R. (of the newly acquired giant tractor), and Jason (of the wonderfully on-going designer/builder/architectural fame have now taken this project to a new level. Actually, it is the first level.
I'm not asking too many questions......but it involves finding big rocks.....chaining them into the tractor bucket......transporting them to the house site.......telling a lot of stories......eating jelly beans........laughing........and then doing something with the rocks.....some left-over dirt.....raking.....more laughing.......mouthing off.......thinking about gravel.......and some other stuff. So far, I really like what I've seen when I get home from a real job.
And then there's MY contribution. It is very cerebral. I have harvested these flat rocks from the bottom of the James River.....drug them to the gravel bar on a blue plastic sled that I found washed up in a log jam.......wheel-barrowed them to the truck and transported them to the house.....to make a nice little rock path leading to the faucet which is camouflaged behind the sculpture.......the water feature, remember? And all of that took a long time......but that is my idea of a very good time. Wading in the river and looking for rocks. Great.
So......then I put the flat rocks in a fairly straight line, made a hard right turn, headed directly to behind the water faucet..............and thought that was the stupidest-looking and stupidest-acting path I had ever seen. Good grief. A rock path (that was difficult to even walk on, at best) to a water faucet.
Consequently, I got my wheel barrow and picked up all of the flat rocks and transported them to the side of the driveway and stacked them over by the propane tank and I no longer have a nice rock path to a water faucet..........that looked very stupid.
DISREGARD THIS PHOTOGRAPH. I COULDN'T DELETE IT......AND DON'T UNDERSTAND IT. IT DOES NOT BRING BACK ANY MEMORIES AT ALL. THAT'S JUST FINE.
And here are a couple of nice spots to contemplate flat rocks.......and other world situations. Stay tuned........it ain't over till it's over.
Remember the red water faucet that graced this prominent space with its presence? Later painted "Black Fox"? Well, that camouflage wasn't good enough for my friend Ken Richardson. He thought a sculpture was needed. He took a discarded piece of the container....probably part of a window that was cut out.....found the perfect rock on the gravel bar in front of the house.....had a piece of hedge he had been saving for something very important.....and saw a discarded bed frame in a country ditch & called on his wife Shirley to help haul it into the truck for the metal that was required. He calls it a water feature.
And.....like father, like son. Ken's 92 year-old-father decided I needed a bench in front of the house....... had been saving that piece of wood for something very important.......fixed it up and sent it my way......and I now have the perfect place for some heavy duty meditation. And plenty of subjects.
So........I now have a bona fide place to park my truck......vents in the roof of the storage container.......a metal door on the house-end of the container which makes for a speedier and somewhat more civilized entry........great shelves on the inside.......a hand-rail/cable combination on the ramp......a metal door to get into and out of the crawl space.......a gorgeous metal roof vent cover.......and the participation, once again, of some great friends and family.
Michael Mardis......applying the one-of-a-kind, architecturally-designed, state-of-the-art vent fan cover........to replace the previously 24 hour-a-day racket-flappers that caused me many sleepless nights. Phew. 
And the crew from Advanced Welding who put up the railing and storage container door in record-breaking time without a hitch. All things should go so smoothly.
I know. It's not everyone's dream......but that metal crawl space door that Michael installed is definitely a work of art.....and guaranteed to keep any love slaves that I happen to adopt safe, secure, and tremendously obedient.
None of the self-help books I've read have sufficiently explored the positive aspects of the solid roof vent cover.......but, I swear, I'm a much better person now than I was.
Pretty slick, eh? Other than a very short period of time back in the mid-seventies when the family was able to sustain a cleared-out garage..........this was the first time in my adult life that I've not had to scrape off my windshield every dang day in the winter. I would highly recommend it.
There is a plan in the works to extend that nice gravel all the way to edge of the carport....and to paint the door black.
At some point, I seem to remember using this space to curse crab grass, non-growing Buffalo Grass.........and the whole *&#$:*(:@+! process of landscaping that non-river-facing area of the site. I have recently entered into a new phase of confronting this difficulty and have had some really good help and plenty of natural resources. See boulders above. Jamie (of the prior tree-planting operation, John R. (of the newly acquired giant tractor), and Jason (of the wonderfully on-going designer/builder/architectural fame have now taken this project to a new level. Actually, it is the first level.
I'm not asking too many questions......but it involves finding big rocks.....chaining them into the tractor bucket......transporting them to the house site.......telling a lot of stories......eating jelly beans........laughing........and then doing something with the rocks.....some left-over dirt.....raking.....more laughing.......mouthing off.......thinking about gravel.......and some other stuff. So far, I really like what I've seen when I get home from a real job.
And then there's MY contribution. It is very cerebral. I have harvested these flat rocks from the bottom of the James River.....drug them to the gravel bar on a blue plastic sled that I found washed up in a log jam.......wheel-barrowed them to the truck and transported them to the house.....to make a nice little rock path leading to the faucet which is camouflaged behind the sculpture.......the water feature, remember? And all of that took a long time......but that is my idea of a very good time. Wading in the river and looking for rocks. Great.
So......then I put the flat rocks in a fairly straight line, made a hard right turn, headed directly to behind the water faucet..............and thought that was the stupidest-looking and stupidest-acting path I had ever seen. Good grief. A rock path (that was difficult to even walk on, at best) to a water faucet.
Consequently, I got my wheel barrow and picked up all of the flat rocks and transported them to the side of the driveway and stacked them over by the propane tank and I no longer have a nice rock path to a water faucet..........that looked very stupid. 
DISREGARD THIS PHOTOGRAPH. I COULDN'T DELETE IT......AND DON'T UNDERSTAND IT. IT DOES NOT BRING BACK ANY MEMORIES AT ALL. THAT'S JUST FINE.
And here are a couple of nice spots to contemplate flat rocks.......and other world situations. Stay tuned........it ain't over till it's over.
