{"id":847,"date":"2015-02-13T06:00:50","date_gmt":"2015-02-13T14:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/?p=847"},"modified":"2015-02-13T06:16:01","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T14:16:01","slug":"yard-art-addiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/2015\/02\/13\/yard-art-addiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Yard Art Addiction"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"We<\/a>

We have color now!<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve always been a sucker for yard art. It started simply enough with a few plastic flamingos when our daughter created a Relay for Life team in honor of her husband, Jon, who was battling melanoma. The team was called the Cancer Fighting Flamingos. Our daughter\u2019s goal was to raise $70,000 dollars in seven years, and with the help of lot of people, including many of the people who I count as fans and who are reading this blog right now, the CFFs won through. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Those few flamingos, I believe, were the initial source of my yard art infection.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Permanent<\/a>

Flamingo-Pink Cactus<\/p><\/div>\n

When we first bought our place in Tucson, there was nothing green here. \u00a0Nothing. \u00a0Not even flowers. \u00a0I\u2019m a big one for instant gratification, so one day, at a local nursery\u2014I\u2019m nothing if not a HOPEFUL gardener\u2014I saw a brightly painted six foot tall iron iris and realized that was something that would add a spot of instant color to the barren northeast corner of our desolate back yard. The iris came home in the guise of that year\u2019s Mother\u2019s Day present. (Metal flowers last longer than real ones do.) Unfortunately the brightly colored paint all melted away after years out in Tucson\u2019s unrelenting sun. Having a rusty iron iris in the corner of the yard in Arizona was utterly depressing, so we took it up to Washington where, two Mother\u2019s Days ago, Bill and my son Tom repainted it. It\u2019s now standing in blue, yellow, and green splendor on the patio in Bellevue.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The start of my addiction, a very tall chicken in the corner<\/p><\/div>\n

A year or two passed. We remodeled the house here. Suddenly we had a back patio made of smooth red tile. There was one particular spot, an empty step leading nowhere where a door used to be, was just crying for . . . well . . . a chicken. I have no idea why a chicken needed to be there, but it did. So one day, I told Bill, \u201cI\u2019m taking the mini-van and going in search of a chicken.\u201d I was gone for several hours, six or so. When I came home, Bill said, \u201cDid you find a chicken?\u201d \u00a0\u201cYes, I did,\u201d I told him, \u201cbut you\u2019ll need to come help unload it. In the accompanying photos, you\u2019ll see that first very tall chicken\u2014a wooden one standing next to the door frame on the back patio. That makes him several inches taller than I am, and he was the real start of my yard art obsession which, often as not, includes birds.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"On<\/a>

One of the flock of chickens.<\/p><\/div>\n

I have several chickens now\u2014a flock here in Tucson and another one in Bellevue. One of the Bellevue flock, an incredibly lovely French porcelain one, came to grief this winter. I had him sitting out on the porch. The paint cracked, water got under the paint, and then it froze. Colorful pieces of paint fell off, leaving a pile of debris that was very reminiscent of fallen feathers. Too bad. I\u2019m afraid that plucked rooster has gone away for good now, but the other members of the flocks remain\u2014three metal ones, another pretty porcelain one, a concrete one, two wooden models, two clay ones, and my newest edition\u2014one made of Mexican tile. \u00a0All of them are roosters, by the way, so no eggs get laid. I also have an owl balanced on a weather vane and a metal heron who was absolutely useless when it came to chasing away the real one. (That, of course, is another story all together.) Let\u2019s just say it’s clear I\u2019ve gone to the birds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"PigPot\"<\/a>Part of the remodeling process in Tucson included fixing the irrigation, so now we have pots lining the patio\u2014pots that are currently filled with happy and thriving petunias, geraniums, and snapdragons. One of the pots happens to be a pig and another a little bull. \u00a0And there are various little metal creatures scattered here and there among them\u2014including a wiener dog that bears only the slightest resemblance to Bella.<\/p>\n

\"Bella<\/a>

Bella and her look alike!<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the things I can tell you is that Valentine\u2019s Day always comes as a huge surprise to Bill. \u00a0Yes, it\u2019s on February 14th every single year, but although he sees it coming, talks about it, and worries about it, when the day arrives, he\u2019s never really ready. \u00a0This year I decided that, rather than giving him hints, I\u2019d give him some actual help. \u00a0A few weeks ago when we went shopping for new flower pots, we saw two extra items\u2014the brand new tile chicken and a flock of new metal flowers to replace the now absent iris, four short pieces and two tall ones\u2014a permanent bouquet rather than a temporary one. \u00a0I wasn\u2019t driving the mini van the day I went to pick them out, and a mini van was needed so we went back the next day for the tall ones and also for that pesky tile rooster that was calling to me from the other side of town.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The flower garden<\/p><\/div>\n

Bill had told me in advance that if anything else really spoke to me, there was still some room in his Valentine\u2019s Day budget. Give the girl and inch, and she thinks she\u2019s a ruler. I knew there were metal horses there, and I\u2019m always looking for something for that bare back corner, now that the iris is gone. I thought one of those rearing metal horses would fill the bill\u2014until I saw well . . . the bill. The tall horse was WAY more than the Valentine\u2019s budget. The shorter horse that would barely peek over the wall was also beyond my budget guidelines. And then, next to one of the shorter horses, I saw something else\u2014an elephant with a small red tag attached to his tail. I thought the red tag meant the elephant was already sold. What it really meant is that the elephant was ON SALE!!! for a third of the price as that very expensive taller horse.<\/span>So the elephant came home. I didn\u2019t bring him in the minivan\u2014he had to be delivered. But he lives in the back yard now, dashing out from among a grove of palm trees. Wait, are you saying you missed the elephant in that first photo? \u00a0Maybe you\u2019d better take another, closer look.<\/p>\n

\"White<\/a>

White Elephant Sale, well sort of.<\/p><\/div>\n

Yard art. From flamingos to elephants it is indeed an addiction\u2014and a very happy addiction at that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Happy Valentine\u2019s Day, folks. And may all your bouquets, permanent or temporary, be beautiful. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve always been a sucker for yard art. It started simply enough with a few plastic flamingos when our daughter created a Relay for Life team in honor of her husband, Jon, who was battling melanoma. The team was called the Cancer Fighting Flamingos. Our daughter\u2019s goal was to raise $70,000 dollars in seven years, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,110],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-remodeling","category-tucson","tag-tuscon","tag-valentines-day","tag-yard-art"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-dF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":871,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions\/871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}