Horseshoe Dillo

Pretty psyched to have this original from Bob at Draco, a 'dillo custom welded from horseshoes. He will enjoy hanging in the garden with several of our other steel critters. 

Pollination Beauty

This is absolutely gorgeous. Wait for the baby bat. Strangely, that almost brought a tear to my eye. The world is amazing!

This is a movie by Louie Schwartzberg. I learned about it on TED.

Buddha on Blunn

Discovered this little shrine to the buddha on the Blunn Creek greenbelt in Travis Heights. I love hippie parks with lovely surprises.

Woven Grass

On a recent trip in Seattle, we stumbled upon this landscape art project in Magnuson Park: french braided grass!

If your grass has grown a bit too long and you're looking for something new to do other than cut it with a lawnmower, this is an inspiring idea!

DIY Tomato Cage Christmas Trees

One of the most fabulous things to do in the garden this time of year is put out the Christmas lights! (Actually, every time of year is a Christmas light time of year in Austin, Texas, but we do it up extra special for the holidays.)

Here's a really simple and neat Christmas lighting idea inspired by Unconsumption: take the tomato cages that you've stored for the winter, flip them upside down and wrap them in lights. Voila!

Instant lighted Christmas trees and holiday yard art.

Coming Soon: A Vast Desert

Portal to a Wetter Universe?

On the other side of this portal, is there a parallel universe where Austin has rain and 95 degree summer weather of olden days?

Recommended: Portraits of Wildflowers

Gorgeous right? I was just turned on to Steven Schwartzman's photography site, "Portraits of Wildflowers," for plants here in Central Texas. I highly recommend a visit! His ground-level perspective and framing is just beautiful. The flowers and their forms really come alive. Plus, he includes a lot of great information about each of the species he's photographing.

Flavin-Esque Light Beams

A Dan Flavin light sculpture...

Or the light streaming in from our new pergola splashing against the garage wall? 

Steel Ants

My brother of patio light fame is a creative genius. Genius Example Number 1: He created his own plasma cutter to slice into steel. Genius Example Number 2: He has created all these awesome little creatures with the steel cutter based on patterns from those wooden models we've all put together at some point in our lives.

Just got three of these little ants in the mail.

Look how cute they are...And they are small and intricate enough to fit in my (yikes, old looking) hand.

Haven't quite figured out the best home yet for these steel ants, but I'll just keep moving them around until something clicks.

Thanks bro! You were brilliant even before the Ph.D...

Carnival in the Streets

"Just as an individual person dreams fantastic happenings to release the inner forces which cannot be encompassed by ordinary events, so too a city needs its dreams."

In other words, every city needs a place for people to be freaky.

That's one of the many simple messages from "A Pattern Language," a classic, influential book about towns, communities, homes and landscapes by Christopher Alexander et. al.

Compared to a lots of the more staid cities in this country, Austin has a pretty good amount of freakiness, and more importantly, we have public spaces and events where we allow people to let their freak flags fly.

We have our trannies and thong-wearers, drum circles, and jugglers. We have Barton Springs, where people gather to hula hoop and walk on tightropes throughout the summer. We have Eeyore's birthday party. We have bike zoos and community street bands. Even Sixth Street could be considered a "carnival space," with the Esther's Follies stage spilling out on the street and all the crazy people out and about.

Do we need more? Of course we do! And frankly, the police ought to be more accomodating to street performances and general community disruption, as long as its healthy. They are getting better, but its not like Brasil or New Orleans. Just sayin'.

And now, thank the baby jeebus, we have HONK!TX, which just completed its inaugural year. A fantastic example of Alexander's "Carnival Pattern," where costumed musicians and dancers bring their performances to the street, disrupting the normal flow of the city. Healthy cities need surprises like that.

The two videos posted here are from one night of this 3-day festival and feature the What Cheer? Brigade from Providence, RI. Man, oh man. Just amazing. Local groups, like the Minor Mishap Marching Band and Austin Samba School, also brought their sounds to the streets. Highly recommended event for next year!

And just to bring this all back 'round to the garden, since this is a garden blog after all, I'll just say that I think it's important for gardens to have secret spaces for people to get freaky, and you can take that however you want. But I guess what I really mean is that you need a protected space where you can sing to the birds if you want, you can laze around nekkid if you want, or you can just turn on the music and just plain dance dance dance. Everyone needs it.

critters: From the South Carolina Sea

When in South Carolina over the holidays, we took some great beach walks and I collected a bunch of critters. I'm like my mom and aunt in that way. Put me on a beach and I can't help it; I leave with pockets full of shells and bags of random stuff, like sharks teeth, sea urchin tests and whelks. It's kind of an addiction. (My mom, in fact, recently started cataloging her shelling adventures on her own blog, Tidelines.)

Anyway, I collected the finger sponges, starfish and horseshoe crab you see above. Thankfully, John let me stow these stinky creatures in the trunk for the ride home. Since then, they've been drying a getting slightly less stinky outside, where they will probably remain.

Inspired this weekend, I created an ocean scene in one of my cement planters.

This trio is made of two sponges and a ceramic sculpture by an artist from Madison (sorry, can't remember her name as it was many years ago now). I was drawn to buy the piece because it reminded me of a sea sponge or some other living critter from the depths of the ocean. I think it goes perfect with the real thing!

inspiration: Cement Sculpture at PCO Designs

I've begun to dabble a bit in concrete construction, building a couple of bird baths and planters. And I can't wait for it to get a bit warmer so I can begin experimenting again.

That said, I am a total amateur compared to Paul C. Oglesby, Jr. over at PCO Designs. That's his work to the left. It's all very space-age and has a slight biological feel to it. Head over to his site and check it out.

Amazing!

(Hat tip: Stephanie Nance.)

design for critters: Water Bowl

Okay, I guess a blog should (can?) be a warts-and-all proposition, so I'm posting this embarrassing image of my first foray into concrete artistry.

A friend of mine has made some beautiful concrete planters that we've used around the garden. I love them, and decided it was high time that I took a stab at making them. I knew the first one would be a learning experience (and probably the next three will be too), and well, it was...

The general form turned out OK for this water bowl, but the top edge is really uneven and crumbly, the inside to outside ratio is all wrong, and it just wasn't quite the sleek modern look I was hoping for. But, it'll do, and I've learned some lessons. Plus, it was really fun and easy to make.

I decided that it could still do its job: to provide a little water for wildlife. Providing wildlife a water source in the yard is critical. Amphibians, reptiles, birds, insects and mammals all need water to survive, and in the heat of summer, I've even seen birds lapping up the dripping water from our AC unit.

If you place a water bowl in the yard, be sure to include a rock so that frogs, toads and other critters that fall in can have something to grab onto so they don't drown.

In this water bowl, I used a large stone I collected from the Chihuahua Mountains in Mexico. It's hard to see, but there is a small spiral in the stone which I believe to be a fossil of some kind. The bowl is sitting between a native pale-leaf yucca (Yucca pallida) and a young anacua (sandpaper) tree, Ehretia anacua.

I can't wait to get back to work making more of these...hopefully I can learn from my mistakes!

art: Reflection

Beverly Pepper's reflective sculpture Perre's Ventaglio III at Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park blurs the line between garden and object, at once folding itself into the space and then suddenly appearing manufactured.

art: Favela Painting

This is so incredibly cool. Haas & Hahn do the favelas.

public spaces: Solar Sunflowers

It's not everyday that most sane people find themselves walking next to I-Shitty-5 (translate: I-35), the worst and most heavily trafficked interstate highway in the United States.

But, there I was on a gray Saturday morning.
 

I was walking on one of the trails at the new Mueller development to go pick something up at the Home Despot. The development is going to have all sorts of stuff, but it's the landscapes, trails and prairies that I like so much.

This section of the trail and green space is sandwiched between I-Shitty-5 and the asses of the Big Box stores. Not really pleasant locale to begin with. But the Mueller folks have made the best of it, and eventually runners and walkers will be able to take an entire 7-mile loop around the neighborhood on this trail.

Once I tuned out the constant hum of the freeway, I found the trail and plantings to be surprisingly beautiful. The narrow green space is chock full of native wildflowers and other well thought plantings. The horsemint and Indian blanket are in full bloom and Mexican feathergrass was blowing in the breeze (or was that backdrafts from semis? - oh never mind).

Lots of yaupon hollies, rock rose, muhly grasses and Texas persimmon along the edges. The mockingbirds where in there doing their thing, which is a good thing.

The whole space is anchored by a series of very cool Solar Sunflowers. These towers are nice piece of public art and make for a cool feature to walk beneath and through. I doubt they'll do much for the energy grid, but anything is better than nothing!

Anyway, I wouldn't necessarily recommend taking a walk under the Sunflowers, but next time you're speeding by on I-Shitty-5, just know that birds and bees and wildflowers and joggers are making happy little times there, in what could've been an awful hell strip of nothingness...

art: Cathedral of Junk

Since 1989, Vince Hannemann has been building his Cathedral of Junk in South Austin, and now this backyard playground packed with possibilities is under threat of being demolished. Hannemann transformed garbage into art and it might be headed back to garbage again.

I've heard of the Cathedral for years, and often seen it advertised as an "event" in the Austin Chronicle. Apparently, it's in a few Roadside Attraction books. And well, it should be.

I finally made the pilgrimage south of the river this week and caught a peek at the Cathedral. First, as a piece of garden architecture, it's phenomenal. Hannemann has created all sorts of rooms and hiding places with all sorts of junk, from CDs and keys to car seats, bikes and manhole covers.

This place is not as refined as Dr. Evermore's Forevertron in North Freedom, Wisconsin, but I think possibly inspired by the same desire and ability to find beauty in castaways.

I can see how neighbors could get tired of all the visitors, and well, how city code enforcers might not be keen with the second story access by a ladder and cobbled together with cement and who-knows-what. But, it would be sad to lose this phenomenon. And personally, I'd be super annoyed if this happened to something I'd been created in my yard.

Check out this short video that shows how the Cathedral shimmers and chimes in the warm spring breeze here in Austin, Texas (with guest appearance by Karen and Chris).

Papel Picado

We were recently down in San Antonio for a couple of Dia de los Muertos celebrations, one of which was in Market Square.

I was inspired by the papel picado there, and have been enamored of these banners during previous visits to the city. Notably, last spring we walked around the King William district and many of the houses had papel picado on their porches, probably in preparation for Fiesta San Antonio week. It seemed so warm, fun and inviting to be there!


So, we picked up a strand of papel picado (actually, this is really "plastico" picado) and I've strung it up out back for the season. Papel picado is traditionally used for Dia de los Muertos, Christmas and Easter, so perhaps we'll keep this up through Christmas.


It certainly changes the feel back there and provides some splashes of color that'll be really great when things start turning wintery brown around here (when is that anyway? I love it here!).

Jingles

Uniting the lake and the sea, here's an uber-beachy windchime that I made using shells that were recently collected around Charleston, S.C. Jingles and cockles form the chimes, and a piece of driftwood from Lake Superior finally found itself to be useful. A fun reminder of two beautiful shores.