Never try this unless supervised by an adult.

This tale starts out of greed, greed for the largest wind chimes I could afford and struggle home with. It is funny, chimes sound very soothing with the wind blowing gently through them, but as soon as you try to pick them up and carry them they turn into the chimes from Hell…clanking nonsense. There I was in The Great Outdoors nursery in Austin, eying-up some monster chimes. Like a complete nerd I had to try each one to find the one with “just the right notes and tonality”.  (You immediately forget what the previous set sounds like).  Back and forth I went like an obsessed percussionist to the dismay of the nursery’s staff.

I finally settled on the “set for me” – large but not too large, a deep zen sound with a slight discord . . . perfect!  I clanked my way to my truck and settled them down in the truck-bed with a blood-curdling, teeth-clenching sound (metal on metal) and rushed home to hoist them to their new home in the trees.

The first inclination that this was going to be slightly tasking was when I had gathered the “mad octopus” clinking in one of my arms and started to head up my stepladder, which incidentally kept sinking into a bed of mulch. The gravity of my predicament started with the sudden awareness that the chimes were extremely heavy. I then realized that I had to go up very high on my stepladder to get the chimes to a tree limb high enough so that I wouldn’t be continuously hitting my head when walking underneath them. After 45 minutes of struggling in the heat with my “mad octopus” my new chimes were “up” in the Pecan tree next to my back deck. When I say “up” I actually meant that I had managed to only get them about 6ft off the ground. “I will just duck if I need to go by them,” I convinced myself.  I went to my outside refrigerator and grabbed a cold Corona, sat down, put my feet on a low table, and nursed the bruises on my head whilst waiting patiently for a breeze. About three days later, a breeze finally did blow in. The “deep zen sound with a slight dis-chord” was suddenly transformed into something loud enough to raise the dead,no, Nooo, NOOOO!

Word of warning:  just because something is new – it doesn’t mean you should position it close to you so you can see it or hear it!

I realized this was not yet over, I looked over with dread to my stepladder, then down to my Post Oak at the end of my yard.

The chimes in their new home – they now sound just like I wanted them to. The deep bass sounds contrast with
a number of small, higher pitched wood and metal chimes surrounding the back deck. I now appreciate what
it takes to create a balance of sounds at various distances and pitches, the sign of a true gardening nerd!

Other Interesting things in the yard right now:


Burgundy Canna light show and the cool purples of Verbena in full bloom

Datura (Jimsonweed) caught early morning. Dies to the ground in winter but returns each spring.

Night opening flowers get to 4-6″ wide.

” I told you we should have got a room in the four seasons, Gladdis.”

Stay Tuned for:

“The Pampas Chainsaw Massacre”

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intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by  late  (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.