Rocks That Won't Roll

I have had quite a week, I must say!  I'll try to make my long-winded story short, but it's been very exciting around our neighborhood.  Sometime in the early spring Johntimothy noticed how unstable our river banks were....as many of you know, we live right on the Missouri River, but we're high enough up that we don't have to worry about flooding.  What we do have to be concerned about is our banks and how the wind and water, the level of which is controlled by Mother Nature and the dam about 35 miles upriver, can erode them....enough so that chunks of land start falling into the water.  One section of our bank was really getting undercut and bits of it were falling into the river....the section where the satellite dish for the internet sits!  Having some serious tonnage of rock along the river's edge can help and we were clearly in need of new rock, but it's expensive and if you have the tons of rock dumped in your backyard and send it down the bank, you're just as likely for most to end up rolling into the river as staying where you need it.  But, it turns out we weren't the only ones in the little neighborhood going through this and our very resourceful neighbor organized a major feat...to engage the services of a barge to the load the rock...they were about to finish a job up river and would be heading back down river past our houses.  Many of us got together and ordered the rock, which was loaded by the tonful with major heavy machinery onto the barge and ever-so-delicately placed just-so by the backhoe operator along the edge of our banks.  It was an amazing process to watch....our lot was done yesterday and as I type this, I hear the barge heading down the river to yet another home in our neighborhood, carrying another 40 tons of rock.  I thought we were going to have to move the satellite dish, but they were able to grade the bank with the backhoe, taking care of the undercutting, and now we are sitting pretty....and our banks are stable for years to come!!!   Here are a few shots of the action, of the river, and our precariously located dish, along with the barge way down river, loading more rock this morning.

The weather has been divine...even if it did get to 92 degrees yesterday (did I miss spring altogether?) and I've spent a good deal of time outside.  Got the beds weeded (pretty much), our 9 tomato plants are in the ground and things are looking just fine.  There seems to be huge leaps in the transformation in the plants and trees from one day to the next...amazing how quickly it all happens when the growth spurt really starts.

For the first time, we have some lovely tulips...the bulbs came from Holland as a gift from my niece who travelled there back in the fall.  

I have to admit, it's getting hard to be inside working in the studio, when the air is so fresh and clean and the days are so gorgeous....but I have been working, even if not steadily.  A newly finished piece....

Passing Cloud

The other big news is that I got my website finished....kind of in a hurry, since I thought we were going to be without internet for a time while the satellite got relocated.  Because it's so easy to tweak, I thought I might as well get it out there for the world to see and have it available to help promote my work.  You'll see a lot of framed pieces there that you won't find in my Etsy shop, along with some you may have seen.  The great thing about this is that anything can be purchased directly from my website and it automatically goes through Paypal.  So far, I have a section for framed pieces and another with a few found text pieces, but my task now is to decided which work should be on the website and which in my Etsy shop, since there's really no need to duplicate....although there is some of that now.  The site is not perfect, but a good start and a work in progress....it's just so easy to make changes and additions, that it's not a big deal.  I invite you to check it out and let me know what you think!

www.robertspizzuto.com

I think that's a pretty full report for the day!  See you tomorrow for a found text posting...uh oh, that's tomorrow, I better get cracking!  The problem is I just went outside to take the picture of those tulips and found out how absolutely gorgeous it is out there....think I'll have to spend some time this afternoon in the out of doors!!!

Have a great week everyone....thanks for reading this rather long post!!!

Cheers!