It is just now that I'm about to head back out to Washington that I'm writing of coming home from Washington. I have been so very busy. The busier I get the faster time goes. If I don't cool down and write a little bit before going to bed, it will be 3am before I'm able to close my eyes.
It has been a successful day. I have made progress on the pile of work before me. I was able to close four projects. Burn CD's, and dump the files on my two hard drives. That is a wonderful feeling. With each project I get more comfortable in my work and I'm confident this last project I've finished is really good. I am getting faster at putting together my presentation material, which gives me more design time. Sketchup is the best program for my residential projects.
Back to Washington, Dad was driving me to the airport, which is about a 3 hour drive from the central part of the state to SeaTac. At Issaqua he asks if I want to pull into Marenakos. I love rock, and I was excited to see first hand this famous little business. I was not disappointed. Men in overalls were lined up three wide on forklifts waiting for orders from salesmen. Numerous well dressed customers, probably designers and architects, with notebooks and cameras were perusing the rows of slate and rock and stone. Dad and I, droolers, headed off into the fray.
I was taking pictures of building details on Marenakos had on display, noting prices and ogling favorite rocks. Dad and I were calculating out loud the cost of shipping, adding that to material cost and labor and translating that into the cost required to charge the client per square foot. Yikes. It is not the material that is the expensive part. Rock is heavy.
I love our native rock, but there is some beautiful rock coming out of Montana and Arizona. Some of these exotic rock would make excellent accents to the native rock we typically use in landscapes. I determined to design in some of these special rocks as accents, stone caps and benches.
I love to walk through the rock yard. It has been a while since I have been here in Oklahoma City, but I'm going to have to go back and compare. Brick out numbers rock here. I didn't see any brick at Marenakos. Just rock, and lots of it.
jlw
I am a landscape architecture student at the University of Oklahoma. This is a place where I can explore links and relationships of landscape and Oklahoma.
Jord Wilson
DAYS TILL GRADUATION
Graduate Student of Master of Landscape Architecture;
Bachelor of Science in Environmental Design;
Minor in Interdisciplinary Principles of the Environment;
College of Architecture;
University of Oklahoma
wanderings
I was born in Oakland California. I grew up in North Central Washington, in the eastern foothills of the Cascades and on the Columbia River. I graduated from a school of 250 students K-12. I didn't attend college until after I was 30, so I brought to school my experience: garden designer, carpenter, concrete worker, florist, greenhouse manager, perennial expert, shrub and tree salesman, bus driver, truck driver, apartment manager and maintenance man. Frequently I worked 3+ jobs a day during my go-get-'em-like-your-killin' -snakes years. So I was well prepared for the vigor's of the University and the initiation rituals of the Architecture department. I graduated from the College of Architecture with a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Design and a minor in Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Environment. College has allowed me to bundle my many paths into a single and wide corridor. I started my Master of Landscape Architecture program at the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 2006.
bearings
Knowing where I've been is the easy part. Knowing where I come from and where I am going is the challenge. I moved into a little rent house out in the country about 15 miles south of Norman Oklahoma. During my first winter in Oklahoma, I dabbled in some genealogy. I found two great-grandfathers and their families buried within a few miles of my new home. It was not just serendipity that my internal way-finder connected and centered me in the place of my forefathers. I have a deep connection with this place.
compass
The spirit of place.
Present and past human connections influence our lives. Community, family and place are part of our soul. Regional identity is both cultural and physical. The spirit of place is what nourishes our beginings and tethers our world view. It is also that soul and bond that embraces our community.
Technology has allowed us to disregard the environmental aspects of place. The media wants us to believe we are a global society and that our world is getting smaller. Our world gets smaller when we exchange our spirit of place for anothers.
The spirit of place must be unearthed again to regain the comfort of belonging.
OKLAHOMA
- adobe kuler
- ak river plan
- criterion group
- deq--ok's epa
- myriad gardens
- nature conservancy
- noble foundation
- ok "putting down roots"
- ok biosurvey
- ok climatological survey
- ok greenhouse growers
- ok survey of woodies
- ok tourism
- ok wetlands reference
- okc--will rogers park
- okplanttrees
- ouachita national forest
- pontotoc ridge preserve
- wichita mnts refuge
- wildlife conservation books
PROFESSIONAL
ECOREGIONS
RIPARIAN
SOILS
PHOTOGRAPHY
PLACES
GIS
MY TOWN GOV.
SUNDRY
LEARNING FROM OTHER PARKS
book wish list
blogline
ENVIRONMENT
URBAN
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
RURAL
TOOLS
PLANTS
