The new steps from the Asian Collections parking lot

Nathan's really rolling. Amanda and I helped a little as laborers but after we finished the prep work Friday, it's been all Nate. This picture is on my way home so the sun is only striking the stones after filtering through the foliage on the right. I stopped to look this morning when the sun was striking directly, though obliquely. It highlighted every textural nuance and called up the warm reds.

I believe this rock is usually sold as Pennsylvania fieldstone. It's a mudstone, part of the Catskill Formation, a huge late-Devonian continental (non-marine) deposition that approaches 2 miles in thickness on its eastern edge The proto-Atlantic Ocean was closing; mountains rose, the Acadian orogeny, as Europe and North America crunched together. The sediments that eroded were deposited towards the west in, primarily, fresh water. It seems odd that so thick a deposit wouldn't have been marine but occasional fossilized fresh-water fishes confirm the story.

Anyway, 350 odd million years later it looks good as steps.