4th of July Water Display

Andrew built a series of concrete fountains when we lived on Lincoln Street (in downtown Santa Cruz). He actually built quite a few sizable sculptures back then, and would fantasize about their ideal placement on "someone's rural property somewhere." He had no way of knowing then what would be (or did he?) So now, here we are, and yesterday he finally had the time and infrastructure in place to hook everything up.

They were already placed here and there, but he moved them around the garden a little bit, and ran water through hoses from the spring. The big question was whether water storage from uphill would provide enough pressure, using gravity and no electricity. When water came shooting out six feet in the air, there were no more questions.



We planted this circle garden in the lower meadow over a year ago, with mixed results. The lavender might not like being under the oak trees, and we didn't keep up with the watering very well in the beginning. This way the fountain will water the plants if it's turned up high enough, or we can manually run a hose from the drain in the bottom of the fountain, and water that way. A trip to the nursery is in the works to fill out the garden.





Here he is experimenting to see what kind of spray he can get with an old trumpet.


The water spraying out of the trumpet was funny, but didn't work all that well.



It's hard to tell, but I was trying to get a photo of two of the fountains going at once.




Having a water display instead of fireworks could be construed as symbolic. It is. Plus, having the hoses stretched out on a busy holiday weekend never hurts.

Happy 4th everyone!