Jurassic Trail

A trail tale by Forrest C Greenslade, PhD

 In June of 2025, tropical storm Andrea surged through our area in North Carolina. It brought excessive amounts of rain and strong winds. We believe that a mini tornado ran down our little creek here in Fearrington Village. It toppled dozens of mature trees, including two large Tulip Poplars in our back yard, along our sculpture garden.

It looked like Jurassic World.

 The fallen trees blocked our walking path leading from the community Creekwood Nature Trail to our pollinator garden.

We were devastated!

Our landscape guru, Craig McKeithan and I began to cut a gap in one of the trees that blocked the walking path.

When he sawed through the tree, the root ball up righted with a thunderous thump and slipped back into the creek. Craig made a second cut and used a shale bar to position the log and open the walking path. 

Then -- What should we do with the gigantic up right tree trunk?

Make it into a dinosaur -- of course.

I went to work in my Organic Forrestry Studio to sculpt dino-parts from galvanized steel roof flashing. Using a pointillism technique, I painted the pieces with purple and orange exterior house paint.

Everyone knows that dinosaurs were purple and orange -- Right?

Craig then, attached the parts onto the tree trunk.

Voila!!!

 

I created a baby dinosaur, and Craig attached him to the rest of the fallen tree.

Now, folks could walk the path and pass through between the mother and baby dinosaurs.

That was in June. Craig and I cleaned up as much of the fallen trees as we could, but it was beyond our capability,

I called in tree experts who scheduled a complete cut down of the two 100 ft plus trees tangled up in the woods. 

They came in September.

Philip Tyndall and crew came with all their equipment.

They cut up the gigantic trunks.

They climbed up into the trees and cut down the fallen trees entangled in the standing trees.

With a mini skid, Philip moved a 14 ft log and placed it in the exact location along the trail that I had designated.

For the last few weeks, I had been in the shop making a 14 ft yellow and green dinosaur from roof flashing.

Yes -- they were those colors too!

Craig and I carried him down to the log that Philip had placed and we installed him on the log.

Jurassic Trail is ready for folks to enjoy.

Lemonade!!!

Organic Forrestry Studio, Gallery and Sculpture Garden

149 Tinderwood
Pittsboro, NC 27312
919-545-9743
http://www.organicforrestry.com 

Make a Native Bee Nesting Sculpture

There are a variety of ways to nurture native bees in our gardens. I like to combine native bee nesting units into sculptural designs. This one starts with galvanized steel roof flashing and plastic plumbing tubing.   

Fist, I cut a piece of the plastic tube to be just a little longer that the cardboard nesting tubes that can be purchased from Crown Bees. I cut a paper pattern to guide the design of flower petals. 

I used this to cut petals from galvanized steel.

I fashioned the first layer of petals around the plastic tube.

Using the paper pattern, I cut additional layers of petals and leaves. They were epoxied them to the sculpture.

I used a pointalism technique to paint the sculpture with exterior house paint. We installed our Bee Nest Sculpture on a tree near our pollinator garden. We filled the cone with nesting tubes.