Mukilteo Musings

Our Very Own Phallic Symbol

At least that is what I called it when I took this picture a few minutes ago. You can clearly see the "What now, Mom (or Janet)??!!" look on their faces. It looks phallic to me!

Yep, we bought a ....oh yes,....a rock today. It is strange to go to this place in Everett that pretty much only sells rocks. And they get a lot of their rocks from Montana. I cannot believe seeing shelves of sample rocks for sale including Montana river rocks and shale--the kind my Dad would splash in the water to get me wet on purpose. Outside on the property are bins and bins of every type of rock you can imagine to use as a part of your yard landscaping. None of this is for inside. You can build walls or paths or have gigantic monoliths just for decoration.

The latest rage is having a water feature. Lucas keeps asking me why I call it a water feature instead of a fountain. "Fountain" is too narrow of a definition because it conjures up frilly fancy things like you'd see in Rome. Besides, all of the landscaping business trucks in the neighborhood advertise "water features".

When I was a kid, my Dad built a fish pond with a water fall in the front of our house in Helena. We had goldfish, trout, turtles and water lilies. It was about three feet deep and I thought it was beautiful. So I have always wanted a water feature. Around here, we have too many raccoons, otters, and blue herons (which I call Pteridactyls and three of them flew right over our backyard last night) to have a pond. These creatures steal the fish as fast as you stock your pond.

Most of our neighbors have a water feature so we decided to get with it. Rather than hire someone to do it, we figured out what we wanted and where to put it. Hubby loves projects and he is bored with our landslide. He wanted to take advantage of Lukie's muscle power before he left for college so we picked out our rock today. Dave and Lucas are building it!

The "rock" is basalt and it has a hole drilled up the center for tubing. A pump will gush the water through it into a small pond of more rocks. The idea is for it to get mossy and looking like something you might see in the woods. From our kitchen and bedroom, we will hear the sound of a waterfall. All around it we will plant small flowering bushes.


Well, what do you think the Washington Monument is?

Update

Just one hour later, here it is. Wow! That wasn't hard at all.