Monday, June 28, 2010

Handy dandy obelisk.


I built a dry stone tree today. Well, it is more like a truncated tree with 6 cut off limbs. It's over 8 feet tall. I was inspired to build it after I came across a few longer stones ( that I thought would make good 'branches' ) and had put aside for just such a tree sculpture. One stone had a particularly nice curve to it. By placing another long 'double-branch stone' over it for weight, I was able to place it in the trunk, curving upwards, like a branch.

The trunk is about 2 feet in diameter and in fact the tree is built on the stump of a rather large ( 70 feet tall) pine tree that our son Robin the arborist handily cut down for us last month, because it was very dead and dangerous. Below is a clip of him cutting it down.

In the photo above Mary is seen planting a newly purchased, fragrant, climbing Hydrangea at the base of the stone tree. She wanted me to build her an obelisk for it to grow up on. I'm not sure what I built is exactly what she had in mind.

Anyway, now we have a stone tree as a monument commemorating the 70 foot pine tree, erected on the very site where it once grew.