My Garden

This time of year my garden is in hibernation, wearing its winter coat. I am left with my imagination of what is was and already I am thinking of Spring. My garden is my best art and begins in my greenhouse when it is still cold and muddy outside, far too wet to work the soil.

My greenhouse is one of the first things that I have ever built and it is the perfect size. It is situated to catch the most sun and on cold nights can be heated with only a 60 watt heater placed under the concrete benches, absorbing that heat to share with the plants. The greenhouse is only eight feet by twelve feet but I can grow 150 tomato plants and that is far more than I require.

I have flowers everywhere and don't even know their names. Forty years of gardening and I never got to know them that way. I know what they like and I give them lots of attention, wonderful potting soil that I make myself and nutrients from the sea, kelp and crabmeal, fish from the ocean. I might give them names but never in Latin, always "Suzie" or "Betty" or

"Linda", names I can pronounce.

My garden is walkable, there are no straight paths. I have resting places, benches here and there that I have made, encouraging the visitor to pause. Take it all in and slowly. Metal work, of course is everywhere. Supports for the vines, art for the tomatoes, something just there for no reason at all.

My Garden Photos can be Found Here

If you throw it away

I will find it. More of the world's steel is
produced from scrap than from mining iron ore.

A lot of the art I make is from reused steel as I find it, put it into a different shape and give it a new life. Virtually all of what I make is from recycled steel, formed into new bars and sheets from items discarded. Foreign markets take most of it. We buy crap from China, discard it to the recycle heap where it is crushed and bundled like cord wood, sent back on a freighter to begin the process all over again so we can have cheap imports! Pretty funny, huh?

I go to these scrapyards often to circumvent this process, hunting through this flotsam and jetsam, this continuous stream of steel, much like fishing. It is what I do.

My other Blog is HERE