My Year with Bluestone: Bird Bath Time

Not far from my new building is a long shallow pool. Water sits about two or three centimetres above rows of small bluestone squares. The pool is newish, and answers to the longer, deeper, rectangular pool that edges the south lawns and leads down to the Medley Building.

This pool extends from the new Asia Centre building down towards a peculiar knot of buildings, annexes, odd pathways and tight corners: one of those parts of the campus where it's easy to get lost and where there is no direct path from anywhere to anywhere else. The pool has two cafes, one at either end, and is also not far from two others. There are four or five places to buy coffee in this corner of the campus alone...

I was thinking I would take careful photos of this bluestone pool at one time but tonight as I was leaving (it was nearly 7.00 pm on what must surely be one of the last days of daylight saving), I saw how the birds had moved in. There were still a few people about, but it was much quieter than normal, and I took this video of a crow having a wonderful bath.

After I stopped filming, I saw a thrush down at the other end, where the water splashes into another square of stones, and also a pigeon with a funny moptop. And then, as if answering yesterday's post about things that land on bluestone, this perfectly fresh white feather, just landed on the water. Did it come from the crow? from its secret underfeathers? or was it a trace of Phebus's crow in Chaucer's Manciple's Tale, just transformed from white to black?



In any case, a moment of exuberance, then stillness, and then dusk, as the campus settled from the frenetic pace of first semester, into the quiet of evening, and as the birds returned to the shallow, still waters.

My Year with Bluestone: Water and Gabions

No, I didn't know what a "gabion" was either, but I took these photos along the Merri Creek, and then needed to know what I was dealing with.

A gabion (Italian for cage) is filled with rocks or other substance, used as a retaining wall, often allowing water to flow through, and designed to be flexible as the land may move. This informative Landscaping Network site says the method is both very ancient (originally made from woven willow wattle, like a giant basket) and ecologically desirable as they can use recycled concrete or other material, like this jumble of mostly bluestone. Here are some lovely ones made with glass.

The website also stressed they don't need skilled labour, unlike dry stone walls or the more precisely constructed bluestone walls used in building. I need to go back to the Creek when it is raining to see water flowing through these gabions, but the same day I took these photos, there was just water flowing down this much more formal bluestone wall. You can hear the roar of traffic on Heidelberg Rd overhead but also the sweet sounds of birds singing after rain: my emotional history will try and capture the atmospherics of bluestone. In this case, it's the rattle of storm water and the delicate glint of water against the dark stone:

http://www.landscapingnetwork.com/walls/retaining-gabion.html

But where do we put it?

It's been raining all night. The gutters on the shed out the back are overflowing, but it's too wet to get up on the roof and clear them out. The two big water tanks are full. There are little runnels in the gravel path where rain is running out into the street. The upstairs windows are almost clean. The ponds are full to the brim. It's still raining, and the little frog is unaccustomedly croaking in the morning. The creek will be full and the bike paths flooded.

But now that all possible receptacles for water are full, what do we do with the stuff that keeps coming down? After training ourselves to use less and less, and to save every drop, it seems like a shocking waste. The bucket in the shower? I'm going to have to pour the water down the drain. Guess we just hope it's falling into the catchments, now. I bet I won't be the only one checking the dam storage levels when they're updated this afternoon.