Friday, July 23, 2010

Planted Birdbath

Earlier this week I mentioned on FB that I planted my mother's birdbath with hens and chicks so I decided to post about it and show you a picture.
This birdbath was a housewarming gift from her father (my grandfather) for a new house my parents built in about 1967. It has resided in my backyard since she passed away in 2002. The year before last we had a really hard winter by Portland standards and the birdbath didn't fare too well. It didn't break but it doesn't hold water very long. It sat that way all last summer and the husband suggested he could probably fix it with a layer of fiberglass. I wasn't really digging how that would look so just let it sit until I got a "vision" about what to do with it.
In early spring we had our apple tree pruned. It was long overdue so there was quite a bit of damage when the limbs came down. The gutter on the roof of one of our garden sheds was planted with hens and chicks climbing up the roof. It was in harms way and a limb tore off the entire gutter and sent all the hens and chicks tumbling to the ground in a heap. The husband repaired the shed and I replanted as best I could but couldn't make them all fit back where they came from so parked many in individual pots to wait for a new home.
The husband does fine woodturning (check out the link on the left or click here) and occasionally a bowl warps during the drying process and he is not able to use it. Sometimes they become garden art in mine or someone else's garden and other times he just burns them for firewood.
So now I have three things waiting for a vision - can you see where this is going?? One, two, three, a planted birdbath.
I sure hope they "take". I saw something similar when we were at the Hulda Klager Lilac Garden for the Lilac Festival in April. They put rocks around the edges to help hold in the soil but I'm going with this for now and see what happens.

2 comments:

Rose Chuckleberry said...

I had the exact same idea, only yours was better. Mine was just the old worn out bird bath with some scraps of succulents from the yard. I do love the hens and chicks, they are the toughest mothers out there! Let me know the next time the ol man is gonna burn one of his imperfects, I'll swing by and pluck it out of the fire! I'll trade him something.

Annette said...

I'm glad you didn't get rid of your mother's bird bath and found something to do with it. This might sound crazy but it looks very stately and elegant in a rustic kind of way!!