My Garden Desk
When building out my garden recently, I had a heavy 3/8”-gauge steel pipe 8” in diameter, welded to a two-foot steel plate, left over from a shadesail pole that was installed. When I saw it, I saw a table base for some reason and the very small part of me that is penny-wise said that I should repurpose such a wonderful piece of steel. Steel was only introduced into human existence a relatively short time ago. The Iron Age really began about 1200 B.C. or 3,200 years ago. That is a mere blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. Man had used bronze (something that could be melted in a pot over a fire as opposed to iron, that needed a contained furnace) for 1,500 years before he realized that iron was in such abundance in ore and that it was considerably harder and more durable than bronze, that it deserved the added work to smelt it. The transition of man from the Stone Age to an era of using metals to improve his life and chances of survival only took place some 5,000 years ago. To put that into context, that is only 77 times the length of my own life or a mere 38 times the span of the lives of the people I knew in my lineage (my mother and grandfather included with me). That simply isn’t a long time. Some would observe that it is long enough for us to have fucked up our habitat here on Earth by wasting its resources to the extent of fouling it through our own short-sightedness.
Steel, at its most basic form, is iron combined with carbon. Despite the existence of many alloys which are added to iron to make various types of steel with a wide range of special properties for different applications, 90% of steel is still plain old iron and carbon. I somehow equate that to steel being eco-friendly since it is a net user of carbon (something the world needs to absorb wherever and however it can), but then I think about those Pennsylvania blast furnaces that produce steel and all the high-carbon effluents spewing into the air from the process. Maybe not so ecologically helpful, but at least once it was cast, my using it seems to be a productive choice since it keeps me from buying a newly manufactured something or other in its stead.
I have no idea what my steel tube/plate stump is made of, but I am assured that it is mostly iron and carbon. I have had it painted a color called Illusive Green (at least by Sherwin-Williams), which is really a grey that has a slight tinge of natural greenishness to it. I thought it looked like the lichen which grows naturally on the rocks and it made me feel somehow more in tune with my surroundings to paint it that color. And, or course, a steel stump is hardly productive unless it is holding something up, so I decided to make an outdoor table of it. This steel stump is probably strong enough to hold a banquet table for fifty, but I bought a piece of reclaimed and distressed maple (bought online for its size and look) and had Handy Brad coat it in polyurethane and attach it to the steel stump, which sits proudly and solidly underneath the pebble stones between the Japanese curved teak bench and the lichen-covered rock that marks the beginning of my Bonsai Garden. This all just happened due to the existence of the piece of unused steel and the coincidence of my building out a garden at the same time it was noticed on my driveway and on its way to the trash heap somewhere. And now it is my garden table that I use as a desk in the coolness of the morning.
Here at this desk I am both inside and outside. I am out in the garden and the elements, with the sun rising over my back, the quail fluttering around in the their morning quest for stray seeds and worms, and the wind chimes tingling faintly at my side under the lime tree with its fruit in late summer abundance. I say I am inside because this is like a little outdoor room with trees to either side and a rock with rock garden (the aforementioned Bonsais). The framing of this picture is very focused with the only distraction being the changing light against the rocks and the occasional rustling and scampering of a lizard across the rock face. It is all very peaceful and a wonderful place to write something of a more focused nature (rather than something needing an expansive view of the world). it all feels very Zen even though I am unsure I really know what that is supposed to feel like.
What I am wondering at the moment is how long this little makeshift desk with its burled wood surface and its 3/8”-guage steel base will sit in this spot. Will I like my garden and its configuration well enough and long enough for this to be here for as long as I live here? I think so. It is hard to imagine a plan that would improve on this natural contemplative spot. In twenty years, a mere eyelash flutter away, I will be eighty-six and heading into oblivion one way or another. It will certainly last that long. I imagine I will (or my heirs will) sell this house to someone who will have their own plan for the acreage. They may not like lime trees and Irish Strawberry trees, though I suspect they will. No matter what their feeling about large rocks, they will not quickly be able to do much about these massive prehistoric boulders that lounge all over this high chaparral landscape, so they will remain and I will bet good money on that. But the little makeshift desk is not so easy to project about. It might seem too inexplicable or too industrial to others who hadn’t salvaged the piece of steel as I did. They may be anti-Zen and want to jazz up the garden with nice Frontgate-acquired furnishings. This little table may end up on the slag heap eventually anyway. But I am guessing it will not. I bet that 100 years from now, someone will be wondering where this came from. They may even try to move it and realize with glee that it is merely a very heavy piece of steel that is sitting imbedded in the pebble surface of the garden walk, but not cemented in as they will likely suspected. It feels concreted in. I can’t budge it. I have no intention of ever trying.
The sun is now beating on my increasingly leathery neck and Kim has just asked if I want pancakes this Sunday morning. I have succeeded in pondering myself through the loveliness of my garden office and my garden desk. It is a good morning that will get even better with pancakes with syrup. The twenty or so quail that have been fluttering around me in the bushes and the humming birds sucking at the remaining berries in the trees are all telling me that they like my garden and that if I sit quietly at my garden desk and don’t make too much of a fuss, they are happy to share it with me. The sunlight has now hit the Hibiscus, with its unnaturally but attractively braided trunk, and made its crimson red flowers open from their night’s sleep. That and my heating neck tell me its line to leave Mr. Gecko to wander the rock garden in search of stray flies while I close out my daily writing quota with a last thought. Life, with all its wonders and pensive moments, is good.