Garden Bling!

I am amazed and humbled. This is a plant which I have had dubious relations with. It seemed to grow and bloom poorly and it narrowly missed being evicted many times. This year? It is covered with healthy leaves and dozens of buds. It must be the new trellis Steve made for it...Or maybe it appreciates having the nightshade I grew next to it gone???? 

 This, however, was my project today. I have wanted to do something with this section of the fence for quite a while. After Tex's SIL trimmed back the bushy tree, it opened up a whole new section of sunshine. It is still heavily shaded, so I wanted to do something shiny and festive. This cedar fence is full of knotholes. Empty, boring holes in the weathered wood. I had read articles about sprucing up fences with marbles. Steve was getting rid of bits of wood, one of which was a giant moon shape. I decided space was in my future!

 I also had a sort of a vase shape in the yard, aching to be planted. Unfortunately, the majority of the pieces of wood were prototypes for a gumball machine Steve made in HS. The toy and the bits were walnut, which does NOT do well with plain old staples. Thankfully, I was able to enlist Jon's help. He wasn't super impressed, but he had great ideas which worked. We put up the sort of forget-me-not flower after most of the rest of the wall was done. He thought of twisting a green Mardigras bead necklace for the stem.

 Jon also added the first gold bead section to my 'bird netting space grid'-he said they could be meteors. The pale shapes (stars) are supposed to glow in the dark. In the photograph there are two 'planets' (a red one and an orange one--they have old CD's behind them to help them shine), the moon, spaceships, and a board, which will hold a ticket to the moon (yes, ELO!). There are also bits of shiny necklace beads that had broken off from a fancy necklace, crystals from somewhere, dangling over holes too big for marbles, and assorted bling from various other places. Jon said this part was 'Art'.

 The marbles, however, caused the most heated discussion in the whole project. All the articles I looked over said to drill holes in the wood, hammer in the marbles, and there you go. I pressed several marbles in knotholes, hammering them in lightly, if needed. But, I wanted more!!!! (it is an addicting decoration!) Jon saw what I had done, liked it, and was skeptical. He insisted the marbles needed to be glued in because not all marbles were the same size and the holes would all be off. I was not going to let him do that. The glue would surround the marble and make it not see thru. I was also annoyed the holes he had drilled were not completely thru the wood. Eventually, we realised we were both right. He used the drill to make complete holes in the boards and I let him use glue. It was a perfect agreement. We did the space corner and then added more marbles to the rest of the fence.

 Amazing fun! It will look super in the morning light on Tex's side and it looked festive in the setting sun on mine! Win win situation. I may even sneak into her yard with more marbles and finish filling in knotholes from her side of the fence.