Garden Projects

Anything and everything I'm working on!

I am notorious in my family for going out and searching for "junk". I suppose that could be a bad association to have - "junk lady" - but for me, I not only take it as a compliment, but I see it and embrace it as an opportunity! It is an opportunity to take otherwise neglected and discarded items and turn them into something interesting, useful, and full of history!

So here are a few of my newest garden projects:

(Please keep in mind these are in no way professional nor do you even have to like them. These are just things I have gathered and morphed to fit my personality, style, and abilities! :-)

Old Wagon Planter:

I am fortunate enough to live next to a vacant and abandoned golf course where farmers, maintenance men, and road crews seem to discard all of their unwanted "junk". I LOVE it! I have spent many hours looking at all of the "stuff" in the area around our home; every time I go out, I find things I've never seen! It's amazing!!

I went on a "hunt" in the field about a week ago and stumbled across an old-school Radio Flyer wagon that had lost its wheels. I was ecstatic and jumped at the opportunity to bring it home! I brought it back, cleaned it up, and contemplated for about 10 minutes about how I could get the most of this thing! Finally, after much encouragement from Cam (my husband), I finally decided to make it into a planter.

I love spinach! It doesn't matter how it's prepared, I LOVE it! So we decided to extend our very small spinach garden into this planter. I'm not sure how it will do. I always plant spinach in the early spring in my well composted soil. I have had, knock on wood, pretty good luck with that. So, since lettuce grows well in pots, I figured I would give spinach a try. Time will tell if I'm right or if it was a mistake...thank goodness for trial and error! :) I'll keep you posted!

If nothing else, it makes for a rustic, cute little planter. Since it had no wheels, I had to prop it up on treated 2x4's to level it out. I know lettuce would grow well in this (my mom had something very similar when I was growing up) and I'm sure annuals like petunias would do very well in this...if an old wagon fits your decor of course! :)

Steel and Concrete Bench:

This one, Cam was extremely uneasy about, I must admit! I found this large and VERY heavy piece of steel right outside my house. I knew, from first sight, it would make a perfect bench!

I drug it into my yard, to the back patio and set it up. I had some old concrete pillars, very short ones, I had found months earlier, that I used as the supports for each end of my bench. It worked out perfectly that both pillars, even though they were different circumfrences', were almost the same height. I simply propped the steel in the center of each concrete pillar, and voila! I have a perfect little bench for admiring my little patio!

Cam's biggest hang-up was the fact I had a steel bench on the West side of our house...that means it will be exposed to the hottest part of the day. He has a point here. I know metal is a great conductor of heat. My solution is to place pillow pads or sheep-skin blankets, some how, over its entirety to make it an appealing place to sit and enjoy my garden with the sunshine. Time will tell, of course, how this one works out! :-D