Yarden Evolutions: Early Yard Art

Bear here...

I am guessing the first few years of us being new home owners and having a yard for the first time was fun for the neighbors to watch. Though tiring, the yard was also fun for us to work on. I was not into grilling yet, but we were into nights around a campfire, so one of our first outdoor projects was to build a fire pit. Cool, huh?

In the picture above did you notice the stumps? That's where the neighbors come in. One had cut down a box elder tree. We saw the pile and went over to ask if it was okay to take some branches and stumps. (Theresa is shy, I am not, especially when it comes to getting free stuff.) The neighbor was a little confused and amused. Most people don't want to drag yard waste onto their property, but he said sure, take whatever you want. That "yard waste" lead to quite a few yard art projects. One was behind our white shed. This is just an ugly pile of branches, you say? 

A little imagination and effort and we turned it into a garden room with a view. We spent many nights here on that love seat watching the bats fly at dusk over the field behind our house. We called it bat TV.

The next yard art is in the front yard. It was also known as Stump Henge.

We weren't ready for a Stonehenge project, but at least the wood was a little bit lighter. I thought Theresa was crazy to line up dead stumps in the front yard, but she thought they were beautiful and said they would create great habitat for the wildlife. She also said something about how they started to suggest a circular area under the pine tree that balanced all the straight lines of the sidewalks in the front yard. I don't know what she means, but it seems to make sense to her. We surrounded the stumps with some very cool rocks we bought from a geologist who was having a garage sale.

Those stumps lasted at least 10 years before they broke down, there are still some ruins there that look kinda cool. Below is a better overall early shot of our front yard under the pine tree. See if you can spot how we used the picnic table we got from some other neighbors (shown in the fire pit photo above).

The table wasn't a very comfortable bench until we made adjustments, like the large stump on the right that makes a great footstool when I lay down on the bench. This was when we also decided- why cut the grass when the pine needles would do the same job? When Theresa was researching what would grow under a pine tree (where it is dry, shady, and has acidic soil) she read that the best thing to have under a pine is really just the needles. And she loves to walk barefoot in pine needles, which she did a lot when she was a child in a pine forest where her family went camping. She says they make a cool sound.

Some of our furniture fixer uppers weren't so cost effective as the bench around the pine tree, which was free. For example, this other bench (below) we got at a garage sale for $5. But then the paint and the 2x4s we bought to create leg supports cost so much that we could have just bought a new outdoor bench instead.

You will notice after we painted the bench, it fit in fine in our shade garden, where you'll see Theresa put more of our acquired stumps and rocks. Oh yes, the rocks. We also acquired a lot of rocks for our yard art. Below is a rock spiral that was the first decoration in where the future Catio 1 would be built.

We like stone spirals and we thought one would be cool for the entry to our big shed, so I dabbled in pebble art...

What I neglected was the cement to hold the pebbles in place. It looked good for the summer but was gone after the first winter. Live and learn. Seeing this again is making me want to try the pebble art again. Who knows what we can come up with?

Hope you liked the art tour. When I figure out what's next I'll let ya know.

Type at ya later,
​Bear