Wherein Father Time Does Manual Labor Part 2

So I prevaricated
Yes, the workload was more than I expected and yes - today is not the tomorrow I promised in Part 1. Please send your Notice of intent to file a tort claim directly to me by e-mail. It will be dealt with accordingly.

The landscape designer arrives
Our co-conspirator on the yard project is an outstanding former horticulture professor at our local university. Upon his arrival we chatted for a few minutes about our ideas for the area which is dominated by a huge silver maple. The spot measures approximately 30'x30' and features some massive Anaconda-like roots (which are normal for the infamously shallow-rooted silver maple.)

Said landscape designer pulls out a 5-gallon pail for a stool and proceeds to sketch out, to scale, a plan featuring an amazing array of shade-tolerant, shallow-rooted plants. Examples - a strawberry tree, blue fescue, hostas, thyme, seddum, and several Latin named plants of mysterious origin.

When he left, I had a master plan and two weeks for implementation.

The root of the problem
The first order of business was digging out a pathway from one side to the other without encountering any mammoth roots. Mission accomplished? Nope! This root (partly visible in this picture) was right in the middle of the sweeping designer curve, so using landscaper terminology, it became a "natural feature." Isn't that special!

So where do we go from here?
Part 3 will feature our attempts at planting scrubs and flowers in the weed infested area. Be assured a good time will be had by all right after we're released from the hospital for heat exhaustion. Just kidding. I hope.

Wherein Father Time Does Manual Labor Part 1

The Set Up
In an earlier post I mentioned my daughter and her fiance are getting married in Father and Ms Time's backyard. Normally, that would be a great idea given that Oregon summers are usually warm and toasty, and contrary to populist myth, are usually rain free. So far, no problem.

The Problem
The area where they plan on making their grand entrance is adjacent to a much-neglected piece of land formerly landscaped with a water feature and a couple of rose bushes. Due to time constraints and my penchant for fishing and hiking, the area was covered in ivy with the water feature buried beneath, and is home to a variety of unsavory pests and reptiles. OK so they're not that bad - a garter snake, two salamanders, and some truly awesome slugs. Yuk!

At any rate, the ivy is now history, or it's at least gone underground, (Hah!) and all animal life transported to new digs in an empty field with a nice cool creek next door. So far so good.

Enter The Landscape Architect.
Those of you who can't tolerate tales from the crypt, or photographs of water boarding, or televised gall bladder operations, should stop reading now and move on to a blog describing Adolph Hitler's last hours. Father Time in his infinite wisdom (see previous post) hired a local landscape designer to share his thoughts on how we should proceed with our now bald and craterd land.

To be continued tomorrow. I promise. I need a beer.

Father Time Dinks Around With The Metaphysical

Time is not finite

Isn't that awesome? I read it in a book for intellectuals. While I was at our local library (the one run by Buddhists), I "borrowed" the book from a shelf marked "Intellectuals Only". It was written in bold gold Sanskrit surrounded by dragons. On second thought it might have been for "Ineffectuals Only" . Actually I'm not sure. My Sanskrit is a little rusty.

What I am sure of is it was printed in Sanskrit, a language in which I used to be relatively fluent. Sanskrit employs an unusual alphabet which makes it a difficult language to master. My mentor was a special forces Sergeant who taught foreign languages at Louisiana State University during the Korean conflict. It was a crash course intended to help us with master escape and evasion tactics if we were ever captured by Buddhist terrorists. There were hundreds of them in the swamps of Louisiana.

But I digress.

Time is an either or proposition

It doesn't get any better than this.

Take, for example, an automobile driving at 85 mph. Behind that car is another car poking along at 75 mph. The driver of the first car is happy knowing he's going to arrive at his destination ahead of the car behind. But the lapsed time difference between the two cars when they arrive at their common 25 mile destination is only 30 seconds.

The moral of this story? Both drivers broke the law and deserve to do time.

Is Father Time losing it?

Absolutely not. In fact, he's just found it!