Late Spring is my favorite time in Tennessee. It looks like wave after wave of Mother Nature rewarding us for being so patient all winter. Or at least for getting through it with as much grace as we can muster. The beauty is outrageous. I love the transformation. It comes with the happy fingernail ruining chores of planting and weeding and mulching...(clean and pretty fingernails are overrated, right?) It also comes with visions of new yard art dancing in my head...... Yard art. There are several outdoor projects underway at my house. The biggest two are giving my front porch a makeover and what I think of as the great paver project. The paver project actually got started with the broken bird bath that I wrote about a few weeks ago. (See pic of completed bird bath at bottom of this post!) I put the broken piece back in the mold and poured fresh concrete to fill the missing area and also filled it in and added some tile, making a very large (and very heavy) paver. This is the point at which one thing led to another. Kind of like when taking out the trash leads to stopping at the garden boxes to pull 'just a few' weeds which leads to transplanting the volunteer tomato plant before it gets to big which leads to more weeding around where you just planted it, and then you have to turn the compost when you take the yard waste over to the bin, which reminds you that the compost can in the kitchen needs to be emptied which takes you right back by the trash bag that you abandoned in the middle of the yard 3 hours ago. Sheesh. Here's how it unfolded: these pavers are big...almost 2 feet in diameter...they define a walking path for sure, but also have a visual impact. I decided that I wanted 5 or 6 to make a new path from the sidewalk to the hose. I can cast one each weekend because I have only one trash can lid (mold) and I keep it in the mold for a week. It's so heavy, I don't want to risk breaking it. Here's the second one, still curing in the mold and not cleaned up yet: And then this thought...if I was going to put concrete and tile pavers on one side of the yard, surely I needed to put some on the other side, right? I decided to dress up a sitting area that had been a "rug" of small river rock and a bench by putting down a new rug. Kind of like replacing that classic, yet boring, off white rug with a contemporary carpet of colorful geometrics. The solid concrete pavers will be acid etch colored in 2 or 3 more weeks. They need to cure for at least a month before coloring. It will also look more established once the frame weathers a bit. (And will look prettier once the homeowner--me--cleans up that bench!) The finished birdbath.....
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Hi, I'm Donna. Long time artisan/creative. Full time work in nonprofit world. Mother of two adult sons. Currently, also mother of two cats. Recent PostsThe patience project. Because patience is a virtue. And a creative challenge.
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September 2018
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