inspiration
July 24, 2010
We’re thinking of tearing down the ramshackle pressure-treated lumber fence along the back of our property and replacing it with a low wall of screen block, then replacing the 3 or 4 trees that would have to come out in order to do such a job with redbuds, dogwood and sumac. It’s a lovely picture I keep in my mind every time I gaze out the back door at our unruly, chest-high meadow of a backyard with its waiting-to-be-hauled-to-the-dump heap of crap at the back.
This screen block wall was spotted while walking around Chicago’s Little India neighbourhood last weekend. It’s a pretty common block pattern you see a lot in institutional buildings of a certain era (the same pattern as the Monastery I photographed so often while living in North Bay), only the blocks are about half the size and made of terra cotta instead of concrete. I don’t know if you can even still get this kind of block but it’s awfully pretty. Especially with the rows of block offset instead of jack-on-jack like you usually see (as in the Monastery). Just close your eyes, forget about the half-finished porch, and all of the scotch thistles that need to be uprooted right where the patio is going to be, and the long grass and the infant trees coming up everywhere and the falling-down fence and the awful mulberry tree and the pile of scrap wood to be cleaned up, and imagine cool filtered light and delicate redbud branches arching out over this wall (only lower). Lovely.
Posted by jodi on July 24, 2010 at 8.32am
