Around the Fountain

When we're at our place in Fountain Hills we like to walk around Fountain Park every morning. Good exercise for us and Tilly loves getting out as well. We see changes around the park every time we return.
The biggest change we saw this year was the painting of the wall that surrounds the pump house. The pump house has three giant pumps that power what was once the world’s tallest fountain.  It's still the world’s tallest fountain that goes up daily – every hour on the hour for 15 minutes from 9am to 9pm.

A mural was painted on the wall years ago. When we got back to FH this fall it was covered over with white paint. Nothing happened for a few weeks. Then we saw these funny little black lines appear on the wall. We had to miss a few days of walking and when we returned the wall was painted with beautiful, colorful flowers.

We had to find out what happened. From what we can tell the project was a collaboration between the art students and the CAD (Computer Assisted Drafting) class at the high school. Once the design was created the CAD class computerized the images. They then projected the designs on the wall and drew the black lines of the mural. The students got a very large supply of spray paint cans of many colors and went to work . Some of what they did is pretty amazing and very professional looking – close up the detail shows a lot of talent. A link showing the process from start to finish can be found at Painted Petals 2013 and is pretty interesting. It shows much more detail than I have and is worth a look.

One of the things FH is known for is its donated sculptures and we see many of them around town and on our walk. Here are some of the ones we see on our walk.

This horse gets a lot of attention. It's made from a variety of weird objects - everything from egg beaters to forks to car parts.

A variety of waterfowl show up at the park throughout the year. Our favorite is the hooded merganser and we're always happy to see them return.

They all hang out together and it's fun to watch them diving and playing. From a distance they look like little sailboats.

We'll be leaving for Mexico soon - it will be interesting to see what changes have occurred by the time we return this spring.