So the second satellite dish finally got turned into a bird bath.
Before:
After:
I used thinset to set all the glass beads on the dish.
I am still debating on whether I would like to grout it or not.
I wont be sealing it, because I don't think there is any sealant safe for birds out there.
This garden has been a loooong time in the works. Right under one of the windows in my home was this huge ugly yew or was it canadian hemlock? Not sure. But it was wrong for the spot, needed constant pruning (which I hate to do) and just had nothing interesting to offer, year after year, season after season.
One fine day, it met its end under the chain saw.
I toyed with various plans for that spot while the spot started to grow weeds and look like this.
Not pretty. Still, not very threatening. A few years passed and it started to look a lot worse. Crazy weeds, crazy grasses, everything. So finally this past weekend, I decided to start work on this. One of the big hurdles was the root of the old yew (or canadian hemlock? Either way, it was mostly eww...). It was getting in the way of my cinder blocks.
I finally got my reciprocating saw and cut the root out and started to lay the first course.
If you look at the right hand top corner of the pic (inside the cinder block perimeter) you can see the remnants of that root. And similarly the left bottom corner of the photo has another portion of that same root.
So I had this old tea kettle lying around at home that I did not really like all that much. It had a rather uninspiring finish and was just-- blah. Anyway, it got fairly good use as a tea kettle, but once the handle started to rust, it became less used as a tea kettle and more of a temporary kitchen scrap holder.
Finally, I decided to give it new life and center stage in my garden.
Tada! Behold my tea kettle turned garden art. All it took was some copper spray paint from the local hardware store.
I hung it on a shepherds hook, so that when it rains, some water will fall through the spout making an interesting water feature.
The idea is for it to gather up some extra water during the rain and pour it at the feet of the ever-thirsty hosta.
The lid became a bird bath.
The stone in the centre should hopefully keep it from flying off in the wind and also provide a little perch for the thirsty flighty things!
Do you like my chocolate sunrise blooming gloriously just beyond the birdbath?
Remember the cinder block bench I constructed last year? Here is a link.
I made another one today, but a little different looking. This time, I used no capstone, just 4 cinder blocks and two posts for the bench.
All I did was to stack one cinder block vertically over a horizontally placed cinder block and insert the two posts through the holes. Of course, I do need to work on clearing up the area near and around the bench.
Sunday was a day to finally work on building my patio paver planter. I love contemporary furniture and garden decor and was initially planning on building a large planter from concrete for my front yard. My only problem was building the form for this thing. I was procrastinating because of the effort involved.
1. It is vitally important to find a perfectly flat surface on which to make your planter, otherwise, things just don't line up right.
1 a. So, when you don't have things lining up, you need something to force the ends to touch each other. Either a clamp mechanism or an improvised clamp mechanism. I just improvised
2. I used some pebbles as spacers when I was trying to attach the bottom for the second planter.
3. Next time, I think I would use very thin strips of wood as spacers when attaching the bottom to the rest of the planter, because these pebbles weren't even and so did not really help much. I landed up having to move them out.
4. This could also be used as a bottom less planter if you want to put it directly on the soil in the garden to create some vertical interest while still having a mostly seamless look.
Can't wait for these guys to cure so I can paint them!
I hope the construction glue will cure well to give me nice drainage channels at the bottom. I was not so luck one one side of the planter, where the weight of the last block squished my construction adhesive flat!
So what do I do?
With a chimney top that flew
Right off the roof?
First, I suggest you replace that chimney top! Phew!
Now that you have taken care of business, let's see what we can do with that old chimney top, shall we?
First: stare at your chimney top for a bit:
From all angles!
Wow! Isn't that rust soo beautiful? If only I could "fix" it and then simply hang it from something. Something very heavy and sturdy.
I could do that, but I was too hungry to do anything heavy.
So...
I could pad up the sides with cardboard from old packing boxes
Then dig up some soil from the yard. In may case, it was Earthworm Central and I couldn't insert the trowel without catching a good number. Here is one of them that did not want to quit! And he was the thinner ones too!
Now, to find a plant. Not hard. Several of my plants have not yet made it to their permanent homes, thanks to my unparalleled procrastination skills.
This guy, in a pot too small for him, is one example:
Every bend in the plant corresponds to when it got too hot and I neglected to water it!
And here is the "chimney pot" after I watered the poor thirsty plant! It would look lovely sitting on something concrete, but I am too tired now to haul it up to the front yard and set it up all pretty!
I am beginning to believe in the saying that "there is a time for everything". As in, sometimes, no matter how you try things don't work and then out of the blue, everything just clicks into place.
My raised garden is clicking in to place.
I started with demolishing an old cinder block raised garden (see here) that was overgrowing with ivy and built a more contemporary looking raised garden out of cinder blocks (see here). Even after I built it, I had no idea what I was going to plant in there. Nothing really came to me except, I thought that I should fill up those protruding cinder blocks with hen and chicks.
When I went to the nursery to buy these plants, I landed up also buying some aloe for my office. I had set the aloe out on the raised garden, meaning to let it get some real air and light until the weather gets cooler.
Walking past it every day sort of gave me an idea for the garden.
First of all, all that demolition had left the soil in uneven mounds in the raised garden. Secondly, only the very outermost couple of inches see any water at all due to rains. Since I normally select plants that can do well with what nature provides in terms of watering, it would be tough for the plants away from the edge to get any water at all! These situations are however, great for a rock garden.
I had some large rocks in the backyard, where I planned to source my rocks from. Walked up all the way only to find this:
What? Where are the rocks? The ivy, the poison ivy and other weeds have swallowed them whole!
I had to rip out whole long list of unidentified creepy things to discover some. The one in the photo turned out to be useless, because it had rough edges and I was looking for the more rounded forms.
Anyway, I waded through the poison ivy and several unmentionables and removed some rocks and arranged them in the rock garden. The idea was to create a flow in the garden. Like in Zen rock and sand gardens.
The idea was to create a flow in the garden
Here the rocks represent the flowing river.
... where the rocks are the river and they are flowing down a hill
Finally I was happy with the placement. So filled in some soil and added my plants
I decided to put the bird feeder right on the bed, so that the cats can view the action from the window
I "naturalized" the now dysfunctional solar lamp into the creeping euonymus plant.
The spurge that you see in the forefront came in an interesting biodegradable pot
A closer look at the two hen and chick plants
Although the white rock is an oddity in terms of color and shape, I think it will highlight the pink flowering plant better.
View from the door step, with the little aloe that started it all in the forefront
I think I am in love with this garden
View from the house
Apparently I am not the only one in love with this garden. Wait until the birds discover the feeder. Then we will have a party!
