With the aid of Harvey and two Luther luther students (Kim and Neil), we set out on Sunday, April 28 to Seed Savers in hopes of completing the installation that afternoon. Several things conspired against us:

1) we forgot to load some of the metal parts and had to wait until 5:00 to get them2) our truck (not 4-wheel drive, as we discovered) got stuck in the mud
3) threading the wires through the metal legs took much longer than we anticipated

After about 2.5 hours, we were able to get one tripod up and running. At that point, we broke for dinner. The next day, armed with a better sense of what needed to happen, I worked on the other three tripods myself for about 7 hours, completing as much as I could on my own, and then Kim and Neil came back in the evening to help me put on the legs and feet. The following day (April 30), I put the finishing touches on the installation, and the piece was officially ready for visitors.

It snows in May in Iowa

It’s a good thing that we got the piece up and running prior to May 1, because that’s when the weather took a dive. We had snow on May 2 and 3, which didn’t affect the installation so much, although it did make people think twice about ventuing out on the trail.

But May 4 came along, and after a somewhat chilly start, the day turned out to be just beautiful, with sun and temperatures in the high 60’s. Several hundred folks came out to Seed Savers to buy rare plants, see Val Miller’s wonderful cow portraits, and listen to Talking Trees. We spoke with several members of the media. So far, so good!

May 4 at Seed Savers, tripod #1 (water)