Make do and mend Mondays

A week flies by when you are busy and we have been busy. We stayed at home this weekend instead of going to the cottage as we had another garden project to finish.

Our philosophy is to spend as little as possible and still create a nice garden so recycling items is a big part of that. Last weekend, we went to a monthly flea market held in Friesland. We found a couple of treasures to bring home with us. One was an old iron barn window frame. The man was asking 35 euros for it but Jos was able to get is for only 17,50 euros. Bargaining is a major sport for Jos.

We have been doing a number of projects in the garden and while ripping up one area, we removed a row of round posts. Most of them were rotted but two were still good. We had saved these and now put them to good use. Jos mounted the iron frame (boy is it ever heavy!) to these posts but it was not quite right.

I rummaged through the pieces of oak floorboards that were put outside by the man who laid our floors. These have been sitting outside since October so well weathered which was just right for what I had in mind. We cut up the pieces we had and created what looks like a piece of wall left from an old shed.

This is the results.....a ruin of a folly.....

We hung our old rusted thermometer on the wall, planted a star jasmine at the foot of the window frame and it still needed something. I was sitting on the terrace close to the house and suddenly thought what was needed. There was a dark spot under the trees and it needed something light to grab your eye and make you want to walk to the back of the garden.....

So we moved Jos' statue there. He loves that statue so I call it his. *grins* He had to play around with what to use as a base to make sure she was visible from both terraces. Now Mother Nature has to do her part. Around the ground where we placed both the wall and the statue is bare. Eventually ivy and other ground cover will start to grow up the wall which will make it looks as though a shed had been there many years ago.

This make do project cost us only the 17,50 euros for the frame and hard work. All the wood and poles we already had.

Our garden is finally starting to feel like our own. We have to catch up with 16 years of no work being done. That means rock solid earth and much weeding. It is starting to come together. I am adding things in nooks and crannies to create a secret cottage garden feel to it. I already dubbed it Granny's garden but I will tell you that story in another blog post.