Inspiration and Perspiration

My "weekend" has been busy... Saturday we went to the Minnechaduza Day Festival on the River in Valentine, where they had turtle races (I bought five, and one came in second so I won a prize) and canoe jousting. Then I came home.. and Sunday painted the hexagonal pond out front with KoolSeal. Two coats. KoolSeal, for those who don't know, is a rubbery-texture coating used to waterproof trailers' - eek mobile homes' - roofs.

This pond had been ignored for several years, and improperly repaired when it cracked, so last week I wirebrushed all of the old repair stuff - grey KoolSeal and grey bonding cement -out of the huge cracks. The coating of bright white KoolSeal all over made the pond waterproof - thank goodness, because sure enough we had a rainstorm Sunday night. Here's a picture of the sun setting over my back hill as the storm went away...


And here's a pic of the pond today, after we lathed two full bags of white bonding cement around the whole thing on top of the KoolSeal. You can see the lines of the trowels - this bugger's shape just would not allow for a nicely troweled even surface. But at least all those cracks are gone - sealed tight as ticks and inpenetrably. So it will have to be sanded a little more to make it smooth, then tomorrow I'm going to put another coat of KoolSeal on it, just to be sure that all of those little fiberglas strips in the cement don't wear out and away.


But then, I got an inspiration... in 2003 I made tile backsplashes to go behind my sink and stove. I never got the time to put them up, and now my new house doesn't have a place for them. Sigh. So, now what do I do with them? They were both baskets of roses and other flowers, one much larger than the other, of course, and all meant to be put down just like tile, with spaces in between, to make a nice restful pic.



Yup, I cemented them right into the bottom of the pond....

There are little surprises like this all over my yard; I brought all of my cement statuary with me when we moved. An Indian bowhunts from behind the hawthorn tree, an elf sits on a mushroom in a garden patch, St Francis greets vsitors as they come up to the front porch, and the squirrel birdbath with the frog in the center is under the maple trees. The cement raccoon spilling the bucket at the pump has been waiting for the pond to get fixed so he can really spill the water, with his handy recirculating pump hidden below; and an alligator hides nearby in the grass. So why not add a little extra surprise in the bottom of the pond?

OK, I can't help it. The white board fence out front needed to be repainted, so it is now bright white - but instead of ordering 22 finials, one for each post, I stenciled a single bright red rose on each one. My neighbors have been complimenting me - and suddenly there are no less than five houses where the residents are painting too. Houses that haven't been painted in a long time, alligatored and grey and sad, are starting to burst with bright, new, clean colors.

I didn't mean to start anything here; I love this house and wanted to restore it to its former beauty, give it the potential that was buried under years of neglect and dirt and old paint. Not only that, but it will be the frontispiece for our greenhouse business, so it has to be welcoming, warm, a little off-beat and recognizable as different. Call it my advertising experience; no one wants to do business in a place that doesn't make them smile and feel happy. Plus I like to show off my ceramics skills whenever and wherever I can... With my shop in one whole room in the basement, advertising is good. Greenhouse in the spring and summer, and the firing of the kiln in the basement in the wintertime, is my plan... year round productivity.

And since we are doing the house in a dark, BingCherry Red and White (I had to wait 45 minutes while the girl at True Value in Valentine got the color to exactly match my scrap of material) it will look really good come Christmastime, too.