Garden Art

As much as I admire colorful flowers and beautifully landscaped yards, interesting garden statues and ornaments placed among them I find enhance the looks. 

 

In my August 1^stpost I showed pictures of some garden art that I had made. Those were pressure treated 4x4 cut off posts that we had left over from previous jobs around the yard. I painted them with paint from the dollar store and used different motives for each one and then added diverse types of tops to make them all unique. They got a final coat of clear lacquer to keep the paint from peeling and fading in the elements.

 

Last week I created another piece of garden sculpture from driftwood and pebbles that I collected at our little beach across the street. Northeasterly winds push the waves of lake Erie onto the shore and occasionally shove wood and debris onto the beach. Even whole trees have ended up there in past years and some of them are still lodged among the boulders and stones. So when I spot a piece of driftwood that I find interesting, I pick it up for perhaps a later use. 

 

When I discovered this long piece of driftwood that must have been a post in its previous life, I had the idea to hollow out a long slit in the center and to fill it with stones. The idea is simple, but the execution turned out to be a bit more problematic. Benno, my loving hubby, came to the rescue with his router and a specific router bit that was just the perfect size. So the credit for carving the perfect groove goes to Benno. I then painstakingly collected pebbles of various colors and textures that were all very close of the same size and thickness to fill the gap. To hold them in place I mixed two parts Casting Epoxy and poured it over, it flows like water, into the grove and onto the pebbles.  The finished project, complete with a wooden dowel as a support, now adorns one of our flowerbeds. 

 

Smaller pieces of driftwood I collected ended up in a vase that sits on a little table in our guestroom. 

 

There is not only driftwood at the beach, but beach glass can be found too. I gather mostly green glass and it seems to be in the majority of my finds. What to do with all that glass? Well, I fastened a dried up branch onto a piece of driftwood and glued little pieces of beach glass around the branch to look like leaves. It’s not a masterpiece, but it adorns the clematis flower that is climbing up at my shed.

 

Lake Erie can be quite fierce at times but when the wind is calm and the sun is out it sure is pretty and Benno and I have the yearning to be cruising again on one of our previous yachts.  Such nice memories!

 

This is the view onto lake Erie from just a few steps and across the street from our house.

 

Thanks for visiting and I wish everyone great days this September.