BLUE CHAIRS

A work in progress to camouflage an ugly spot.  Eventually this wall will be opened and French doors and a deck will look onto the garden.  While patiently waiting, something needed to be done and this little vignette was  the solution that occurred to me.  The blue chairs and blue shepherd's hooks came from the Christmas Tree Shop and the trellises were waiting for me at a supermarket I never visit.  Serendipity.  As it has rained cats and dogs for weeks, the baskets should be fuller in a week or so.  More later.  

SUCCULENTS

Happily coexisting in an old, cracked bird bath in full sun, with no care whatsoever.  And I KNOW that fairies live there.  

MUST EVERY DAY BE SUNNY?

It's not like it's been raining relentlessly...  It's not like it's been depressing and horrible and wet and dark every hour of every day...  Yes, we had a heck of a blistering summer, but autumn had more bright days than not.  All the same, there's a note of melancholy all over...  Is it me alone?  Is it the economy?  Is it the world situation?  Or maybe it's the Zombie Apocalypse.  Or the Fiscal Cliff.  Or the Mayan Calendar.  Could it be the thought that another year just fizzed away?  The happy me has been replaced by a moody moi.  A moi like the protagonist of a black and white French film.  This too shall pass, I'm sure, but in the meantime, dark thoughts will crop up and dark pictures will find their way into my camera, my garden, my world. Little Red Riding Hood will encounter the big bad wolf in the forest...   Oh, snap out of it, you old and tough little gardener, you're not a temptingly delicious morsel anymore!  

FIFTY CENTS

Every winter, when the darkness and the cold and the inability to at least take a walk in the garden get to me, I promise myself to learn how to make hypertufa planters and bird baths.  Every spring and summer I look at the list of materials, the time constraints, the mess involved, and say to myself, 'no way!'.  Admiring from afar the nifty troughs and statuary, the lovely leaf-shaped bird baths and fountains, this failed sculptress sighs and looks the other way.  And then... the Methodist church down the road had its world-renowned rummage sale!  Denise Boal, an old hand at this kind of rumble, outlined the plan of attack for me, a mere neophyte, and in we went, plodding through the crowds.  Dodging sharp elbows we waded through the maelstrom of old stuff, new stuff, the good, the bad, the ugly.  We saw, we chose, we grabbed, we conquered.  Voilá la piéce de resistance:  A birdbath just as I always dreamt I'd make myself someday!  No schlepping of materials, no mucking up, no fuss, no disappointing results.  Life is good when your dreams come true with a pricetag of fifty cents.