Yard Art

It's Spring!  With all the wild things blooming and joyful. I want to get outside and enjoy it too.  I have been incubating a yard project for months and months, and driving my Sweetie crazy collecting his wine bottles.  His creative vision is very different than my own, and doesn't take up nearly as much space as mine do or require collections of stuff. 

I saw these images on Pinterest a year ago and have been collecting ever since.

I think the path paved with bottles could be hazardously slippery, and after all, who would want to dig in that far to plant bottles or risk broken glass under foot?  I really love the look of the bottles used for edging.  There is just one issue, and that is pesky mosquitoes.  We have a pond a yard away, and in warm weather, I have to spray the yard and we run from house to car or barbeque grill.  My Delicious Sweetie is a gourmet treat for those critters, and he can't get more than a few feet before swarms of them attack. So, what to do about those concave bottoms inviting water to collect and offer breeding spots for more critters?  I then thought of this image that I also love and blogger cathgrace has kindly given us a DIY for.

http://cathgrace.com/2011/08/garden-balls/

I am going to try a few before I commit to dozens, so I bought some small hard toy balls at the Dollar Store.  With stones added, they should fit right into the bottoms of the bottles and prevent water build up.  I think I may leave a few without balls, as I have read that small puddles of water this size are attractive to butterflies.  I have no clue how they will do in changing weather, so I am going to keep my fingers crossed on this one.  I also bought a few bags of glass pebbles.  I have adhesive and grout and sealer on hand already.

There is another issue.  My yard has lots of old oak and gum trees.  Our yard is lower than the others and years of rain run-off has left little workable topsoil.  Anywhere I dig is an impenetrable mass of tree roots.  I don't intend to fight nature, so I plan to wabi-sabi and do imperfect edging here and there, wherever I can dig a bottles in.

...Those balls I bought at the Dollar Store!  I had the bag on the floor and the Sweetie happened to bump it with his foot and an amazing thing happened.  Please pardon the blurry photo.....

...So, I examined it more closely and realized it is filled with a liquid that will probably break the ball in freezing weather.  I will have to go back for other balls, but isn't that just the coolest?