March 20, 2005
Midday in the garden
How better to celebrate (lament) the last day of Spring Break than with a walk through the neighborhood?
Yard art
Libby Terrace
This side yard near the park is graced with two tire planters. One is ready for spring planting, the other is growing a crop of bricks. The planters are made from old tires turned inside out with the top side pinked for pretty.
Corinthian columns
North 29th Street
I think these people just got their porch painted. They may have had it totally restored. (I wouldn't know, I haven't been keeping track of all the work that's been done on this block.) All the capitals are in perfect shape, which is pretty unusual. On many porches in the neighborhood, half the capitals are missing, or half missing (i.e. part of the capital is there and the other part is gone), or the capitals that are there don't match. This is a result of the twentieth century decline in Church Hill, during which the houses were neglected and the pretty bits taken off and sold.
Moving right along, we duck past the police tape and orange plastic netting that block the sidewalk that runs along between the park at 29th and Grace and the ravine. Here we find where the sidewalk does indeed end, although it resumes about five feet below there.
Damage from Tropical Storm Gaston, August 30, 2004
This is some of the lamented damage that I wasn't able to photograph at the time because I was stuck in a wheelchair. Here, the ground slumped into the ravine below and simply lowered part of the sidewalk. The storm really served to highlight how unnatural the bluffs are. A flat hilltop that suddenly drops into something like a sixty degree grade? Pour a few million gallons of water on it and the true angle of repose shall be revealed unto you.
More storm damage
Looking beyond the end of the sidewalk, you can see where a street and some more of the park used to be. They are now located about halfway down the ravine. That little brick Cape Cod? Was for sale and in my price range at the time I was house hunting. I decided against it because the location didn't seem secure enough (in the crime sense, not the geological sense).
The city has responded to all this washing out of parks and roads by draping them with sheets of plastic, which were immediately rearranged by the rains. Actually, the park below Richmond Hill which I photographed after the storm was just this week regraded and seeded, so maybe they'll be getting to the others soon.
If I lived in that brick cottage, I'd be demanding to get my front yard back. And doing anti-rain dances.
461 words | March 20, 2005 11:09 PM | Shutterbug