Circle of Life

When I told a friend about my new piece of re-purposed garden art, she exclaimed "The circle of life in the garden!" What better place to celebrate the cyclical nature of life, seasonal change and renewal than out in the garden?

Perhaps the best thing about this four foot diameter rusty wheel, bought at a farm auction and mounted onto a stand by Langley artist John Alsip, is that I thinned out and cleaned up my bamboo hedge to make room for it. For the first time in two years, the canes of Fargesia robusta (a hardy, clumper from Boo-Shoot Gardens, a wholesaler near Anacortes) are revealed. Not only do the culms beat a lovely rhythm against the fence, but I never would have seen this thumbnail-sized frog hanging out on the fence before the bamboo thicket was thinned...I love the simple zen of the circle, almost like a shadow, and how it appears to magnify the bamboo canes contained within its orbit...

Comments

[Christina]

That really is lovely, and I'm jealous of your frog :) How green it is! (in all senses of the word!) One of the most fun bits of repurposed art I've ever seen was the inner "harp" from an old piano, mounted sideways in a garden of a house my parents rented on Bainbridge Island one summer. Cool looking and fun to strum.

Just this week a fellow down the street was setting out big concrete blocks, the kind with two deep wells in them, on the parking strip for people to take away for free. I claimed them immediately as I was walking by with my dog, and he helped carry them to my house. They are just the thing to cover up a strip of grass alongside my house, with sedums of different types planted in them. Not exactly repurposed art, but repurposed somethings.

[Wendy at Muck About]

Ha! I'm delighted to see your hoop garden art! I picked up a set of three hoops this summer at a yard sale, and when I unloaded them from the car my husband rolled his eyes.

Well, let him roll his eyes now that Valerie Easton has a hoop in her garden too.

Does this mean we're ahead of the curve?

[Annette]

Those look like the hoops that you get from 1/2 whiskey barrels when the wood on them starts decomposing. I've hung several on a wooden fence to let vines crawl up through and around them. My husband rolled his eyes also - so I'm glad to see that others like them besides myself!