Old Bed Made Into Garden Bench.

For some years, I'd been moving around my old iron canopy bed.  I tried to sell it, tried to give it away, tried tried tried.  I was moving the darned thing in the studio for the final time when I decided to try to make some kind of garden art out of it.  Initially, I thought a nice trellis for climbing beans would be good, but the rails here aren't long enough... I was on line doing a search of potential garden art and came across the wonderful Robojunker site.  It was inspirational, to say the very least.

So, this girl got out her pipe cutters, drill, saw, and drawing pencils and got to work.  

I cut the footboard in half and flipped it over to make the two ends, attached some discarded lumber with the drill and wood screws.  The dark wood in the back is from an old piano that came with the house.  That piano got torn apart, as I could find no one to buy it, and couldn't move it.  I kept all of the wonderful old wood that came off of it, and used a piece of it here to attache the back (the old headboard) to the seat and side rails.  I had a piece of lumber cut to size and then used deck joist material to secure the pieces together from underneath.  Home Depot sells ready made turned legs, so I picked up a couple, and it was very simple to attach them to the base.  They just sort of screw in to some groovy little metal holders and voila!  Bench!  The last step was to sand and stain the bench, and the last LAST step will be to sew a nice cushion for it.  I found some good outdoor fabric, so I'm hoping it'll all hang together a few seasons in the rain.  This project took, in all, about four days of one person labor to complete.

Nashoba Fala Ishto Gardens

Nashoba means wolf in the Chickasaw language.

Fala ishto means raven.

These are the two spirit totems that watch over the gardens, and have been around in my life for a good long while.

My grandfather was Chickasaw, and although I never met him as he died long before I was born, (in fact, he died when my mom was only 3 months old,) he has had a great impact on my life.

I chose to name my site and my garden world using the Chickasaw language to the best of my limited ability in the hopes that the spirits of these two good animals will bless the seeds and the water and the wind and the sunlight so that all lovely things grow.

These two totems also appear numerous times in the artwork that I tend to collect, create and love.  Although wolves are something of a rare commodity here in the Bay Area, I can't miss a day without a group of ravens springing up in the trees.  It's pretty wonderful.