Saw this in my neighbor's yard on a walk - I love it. My dog, well, let's just say he doesn't know what to think of it and did a fair amount of growling when he first saw it.
I love art in the garden. It adds interest and gives you something to look at during the winter months. I intend to add some statuary in my secret garden and maybe a water feature - though I'm not sure if either of those would be considered "art".
This post isn't going to be about gardening. Though there's plenty to write about. My garden has been terribly neglected this year (to the point of being embarrassing) and it's also been the first year a hummingbird has staked it out as "his" garden - I've been dive bombed a couple of times when I get to close to the buddelia that he favors. Also, there has been abundance of butterflies this year. So there you go - a little good to go with the bad.
When Amar and I bought our house there wasn't much of a garden. Sure the contractor planted a few boxwoods and a rhodie bush and called it landscaped, but in truth it wasn't. Our house had stood vacant for several years and the yard was quite overgrown with weeds and several trees that were dead or dying and the contractor did a good job of cleaning the yard and clearing out the overgrowth and dead trees and left with two Honey Locust trees, a cherry tree and two Holly Trees. It was a nice start.
Since then Amar and I have added a fence, a tree, several bushes (Red Honeysuckle, Mock Orange, Forsythia, and a Dwarf Lilac), garden beds with many plants. It definitely doesn't look the same.
Our next big venture will be to add a "Secret Garden on the northside of the house, a patio and a garden gate. Our patio will be in the spot you see in this photograph. We've removed the tree that you see by the fence and Amar will be putting down a patio, turf or deck - it all depends upon his energy and our funds. We would like a fire pit, comfy furniture and some privacy in this spot. It's going to take lots of work but when it's done it's going to look fantastic.
I've been thinking about this for quite sometime and I've decided that I'm going to change the focus of this blog. It started out a venue to showcase local artists who participated in last year's "Bella Faire - Art in the Garden" art show. This year there will not be a show and it was hard enough to get the participants of last year's show to submit information for this blog so I'm going to change the focus of the blog to gardening. Specifically, my garden and the gardens in my part of the world - both community and private.