By Cindy Bower
Tom had a dream come true last fall. He found this 8′ diameter vessel head at the scrap yard. A few years before he had dragged his feet on buying a HUGE one and they scrapped it before he got it. Well, he and Andy delivered this to our corner lot and unloaded it with the skid steer, asking me to help them decide where to put it and then asking me what I wanted to do with it. If you keep up with BowerCorner blog – you know Tom has a love affair with vessel heads and crusher cones etc. – – – then I get to find a way to use them! (He owns Bower Welding & Ornamental Iron – hence his obcsssion.) He had to move the smaller metal “dish” from our selected spot and put it on a dirt pile at the edge of the yard to be dealt with later. Anyway, the new gigantic addition to BowerCorner sat all winter while we thought about it.
One day this spring I noticed a HUGE pile of dug up sod piled on the lot near the vessel head. From the street I couldn’t even see the vessel head for all the mess. Tom’s explanation was that someone was digging up a yard and filling a dump truck as he drove by. He stopped and asked them to deliver all that to our house – – – I’m not sure if it was one or two dump loads but when I went outside I realized what all that noise had been (a dump truck’s hydraulics). On my, NOW WHAT!!
Our son Andrew was moving to Idaho mid-June and something needed to happen before he left. Sure enough, he hauled the skid steer back over on the trailer, unloaded that and started the job of moving all that dirt and sod. I rescued some of it (a bunch of heavy wheelbarrows full) for a needy place in the back yard since there was SO much. In the meantime Andy filled the vessel – which is bigger than it looks.
He then moved the rest of the pile over to the south side of the lot to add to the sorry looking berm that had once been started and then dug out and refilled on various occasions and never finished. This was the mound where the smaller metal dish was now located. By the end of all Andrew’s skillful dirt moving and maneuvering, we had a very nice looking berm that now needs a plan – ok, one more thing.
I think it was the day before Andrew drove off that he and Tom planted a beautiful little Hawthorn tree in the vessel and later I planted some of the creeping junipers with the help of a young man in our church who wanted to earn money. He was tough and a hard worker in the blazing hot sun.
I’m really hoping the deer don’t jump up in there and kill the tree. We’ve lost count of how many aspens and other trees they’ve brought to doom by rubbing bark off with their horns, or eating the bark and branches off. Here’s a picture of one who took residency for a while . . .
Today I drove to a parking lot littered with a mess of pinecones and needles. I loaded a big bin and two 5 gallon buckets with the that nice “organic matter” and came home to mulch the new plants in the vessel. Back I went for another load and I think that should do it. I have already used a lot of my own pinecones for mulch other places. I did also dig up some iris plants that were in a bad spot and added them, so we shall see what happens in the spring. I might put tulips in there too.
I moved a pile of flagstone one by one from the backyard to the new berm on the lot (Andrew moved away and I don’t drive a skid steer myself). Of course in the summer Tom is SUPER busy at work – besides lifting is good for my bones). I have been making steps and will somehow create something amazing by the time I’m done. I’ve found some other cool rocks to add and sometimes find helpers to move them. I’m not in the planting mode yet but will get there. I want to have a beautiful year round “Crevice Garden” as they now call them. It can brighten up the neighborhood. I realized that this isn’t going to be a “rush job” since the heat of the summer – hovering around 100 almost daily – isn’t the best time to plant anything! I had actually purchased some great perennials for the berm (actually a lot of them) but they weren’t going to wait in this excruciating hot summer, for my preparations. I found other homes for them in BowerCorner’s apiary area and the bees are loving them!! (So are the annoying wasps).
By the way, our neighborhood turkey flock – or properly called a rafter, seems to like the beginnings of this new berm. Here are some mamas and teen sized poults checking it out. They make their rounds daily and may have had fun on the new playground.
2 Corinthians 9:15 states: “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” This refers to Our Savior Jesus Christ, but truly everyday I see indescribable gifts from God in my daily life and participating with God in creating a pleasing landscape with His creations is JOYFUL!!
Almost every year Tom drags home some kind of scrap metal for me to figure out what to do with. Check in for Part II of Bowercorner Vessel-mania soon to see more!
BowerCorner 