Bench 2.0

ProfessorRoush places a high value on permanence when selecting garden ornaments or furniture.  I like concrete or iron rather than plastic or wooden.  I want unpainted statuary versus stained or painted figures that need to be refinished every few years.  Heavy pieces are chosen so that I don't need to travel to Missouri to find them after every thunderstorm. Tasteful pieces appear when I can find them, although my tastes are subject to debate and questionable in many instances.

Consequently, when my old iron and wooden garden bench to the right of the front walkway started to deteriorate beyond the point where staining the wood was curative, and to the degree where sitting on it was a chancy proposition, I knew it was time to find a new one, but I couldn't part easily with the ironwork.  This old bench had stuck with me through wind and rain, snow and heat. Who wouldn't have a little interior rot when you spend each of 10 winters outside under a blanket of ice or snow? This bench deserved a second chance and I was just sentimental enough to give it one.

Enter Bench 2.0, my amateur remake using the original iron sides and back.  I used composite/permanent redwood-colored deck material for the seat and back.  The decking material didn't come in the right widths, but I overcame and adapted with selective use of the pre-drilled iron holes and bolts with lock washers.  I tend, when building something, to build crudely but to over engineer everything, so I assure you that six weight-challenged individuals and a dog could sit safely on the new bench.  The curved back iron piece would have required too much work to make it fit, but I reversed it and screwed it back onto the back to increase the weight of this piece and keep the floral print visible.  At this point, nothing short of a tornado is going to move this bench, which I've relocated to my growing "redbud grove" near the shade of a Cottonwood.  Not as formal, but still classy, eh?  It won't need to be redone again for like the next 6 million years and only then to repaint the iron.  And the cost to redo?  Less than a new bench (in fact less than the metal bench that replaced it out front).

You're wondering about the light blue sides aren't you?  That happens to be my "color" for the garden.  I paint almost all the iron in my garden that hue of rust-inhibiting paint, known variously as "wildflower blue," "brilliant blue," or "periwinkle blue" depending on the brand.  I think it looks nice when placed among almost anything in a garden, and it stands out just enough to call attention to itself without screaming at visitors.  Please don't tell Mrs. ProfessorRoush that my garden has a "color" though.  She'll laugh at me and call me strange. There is no accounting for taste is there?

Ornamentation

A mere mention of the word "ornament" to a gardener usually brings forth a variety of mental images of garden gnomes, gargoyles, naked statues, cement rabbits, or abstract art laying around the garden.  I confess that it is no different for ProfessorRoush, who has detrimentally overpopulated his garden with beloved cement statues that range from the thoughtful to the absurd. 

But, it occurred to me this week, during the Christmas season I practice a different form of garden ornamentation, although to no less excess.  You can essentially forget about "stewardship of the planet" during Christmas at my house.  

  

The other members of my household, Mrs. ProfessorRoush, the absent son, and my diminutive clone of my mother, all are in agreement that the annual Christmas tree in our house must be "live," or rather, one of those cut-off but once-living classic Christmas trees. In fact, it must be a Frazier fir, preferred by all for the stiffness of the branches and the longevity of the needles.   I've personally been tempted to obtain the orderliness and ease of an artificial tree, but I've been overruled for a number of years now. And, due to my confusion caused by the various advocates for potted living trees or for the plight of poor Christmas Tree farmers and the distractive screaming of the WEE (Wild-Eyed Environmentalists) who bemoan the fossil fuel consumption represented by an artificial tree, I'm not sure what is the ecologically correct solution anyway.  So every year, I'm hauling in another dying tree to hope that it doesn't become a fire hazard before I can dump it into a pond (for fish shelter) after New Year's Day. 

  

  

 Regarding ornamentation, however, that poor dying tree is gaudied up to the nines every year.  And the ProfessorRoush household isn't into the scene of a purchased set of matching Christmas ornaments or a store-bought, designer approved, ornamentation schema.  No, our tree gets decorated with a hodgepodge of ornaments, all individual and all weighty with family meaning.  

They start at my favorite, the Kansas Wheat Ornament pictured at the very top right of this blog, handmade by my daughter in nursery school.  This one, so special to me, represents Kansas and my former toddling daughter all at one time. There are a number of other homemade ornaments as well like the one pictured to the right, this particular one made by ProfessorRoush himself in a ceramics store to which he was dragged against his better judgement at the time.

There are ornaments to commemorate vacation visits, from the White House and other areas.  And friendships, like the one given to my wife by her best friend and carrying each of their names. There are a whole bunch of soft cloth ornaments like the one at the left that were handmade by my mother one year early in our marriage, most of which still make the tree.

 A very special group of ornaments that decorate our tree represent a tradition started by my father, to give an ornament as a gift most every year to the children, so there are various anonymous ornaments representing a child's age (as for my son's 3rd Christmas at the right) or some that are more professionally done that are personalized to each child, like the one pictured below.  The latter group, of course, will follow the children someday to their homes and I'll be left missing the ornaments at Christmas, probably almost as much as the children.

Alas, it may be a dying tree that provides holiday cheer in the ProfessorRoush home, but it is given the best prettying up we can give it, with each bauble and bangle cherished all.  Merry Christmas to all!

    

Chicken Fetish

One of the definitions of "fetish" by The Free Online Dictionary is an "object of unreasonably excessive attention or reverence."  If that's the case, then I must admit that along with my collection of cement rabbits in my garden, I also have a certain small fetish for artificial roosters in my garden.  Oh dear, Sigmund Freud, what exactly might that say about my psyche?

The rooster at the right watches over my lavenders right outside the back door.  This is a straight western exposure, lots of sun and wind and cold during the winter.  Made of cast iron, I was pretty sure when I purchased it from the garden store that it would withstand the prevailing Kansas winds in this exposed site, and so far, it has "withstood" the worst that the prairie can throw at it.

The second rooster, at the left, is a nice addition to my front landscaping, even placed as it is overshadowed in the summer by the bright red bee's balm (Monarda didyma 'Jacob Cline') surrounding it.  It is also a perfect example of why "permanent" garden ornaments shouldn't be formed from terra cotta.  It slowly decays a little bit each year, but at the same time, I so love the patina and the color of the thing that I can't bare to provide it any shellac or coating.  I assume that someday, after another long winter or two, it will become just another an unrecognizable crumbling clay pillar, but till then it stays vigilant for me to scratch out  any insects that try to invade the house from the front. 

There's just no accounting for garden taste now, is there?  Wait till I finally write about my rabbits!