Garden Decor

Like some gardeners, I am not just satisfied to

grow food and encourage nature's bounty.

I also like to make my beds look pretty.

Now pretty is a very subjective word!

Some like loud and bold, others prefer dainty and cute.

I adore the odd and the slightly magical...

As I mentioned in my previous post,

I was in the process of raking off the dried brown leaves

that we put on the beds in the fall.

We do this to protect our green investments from the harsh winter cold.  

Not only that, but the leaves break down and add nutrients to the soil.

Bonus!

I reorganized the decorations and thought I would share 

with you the truly odd assortment of things I have collected over the years.

A lovely lady in Verona, ON makes this adorable concrete mushrooms.

This one stands approximately 10 in. 

It looks so magical against the backdrop of our newly unfurled ostrich ferns.

Some animals reside here too...but they don't make a mess or need too much care.

So I let them stick around...

The metal rooster came from our first purchased home.

We found it while tearing out the flower garden.

The turtle we found in our current garden bed!

Its become Owen's turtle now.

(It guards his sticks)

I also love driftwood or old logs with interesting holes.

I place them around the garden and see what peeks through the holes.

In this case, I found a small animal skull...muskrat or cat most likely.

The dichotomy of life and death is something strangely playful.

Some of the decorative stone we made one year.

Some were personalized for each family member.

Some now growing moss in the grooves for each letter.

The one above was just for fun.

Last year we destroyed a garden bed that was sorely neglected.

All it was growing was poison ivy and sumac.

We tore it down and reused the flat stones that surrounded it.

We made an Inukshuk...a very Canadian motif.

It is a stone landmark built by many of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic. 

Wikipedia says:

The Inukshuk may have been used for navigation, as a point of reference, a marker for travel routes, fishing places, camps, hunting grounds, places of veneration, drift fences used in hunting or to mark a food cache.

^{Our place feels like it falls under a lot of those categories!}

Tell me on Facebook what decorates YOUR garden!