Totally Turquoise Garden Bench (and a Garden Update)

Remember my turquoise garden swing that I painted three years ago?  Well, last year we dismantled the swing support so the swing went to live with my mother who never throws anything away.  Since we have been designing new flower beds in the lower yard, we’ve been discussing seating options.  My mother had the brilliant idea to reinvent the swing as a bench!  Take swing, add legs.  The end.  See?  It’s so simple that I didn’t even take pictures of the process, which was an oversight because I actually did some designing, measuring, drilling and cutting on this project.  Woot!  Granted, everyone else helped, too.  Thanks Mama, Papa and John!
So basically, we took the swing and figured out where legs would go.  We nixed the existing short arm support in the front and cut a new piece that continued to the ground.  Then we added a leg on the side in the back.  In hindsight, we should have made that back leg go all the way to the arm, too, but that slipped our minds.  Oh well, don’t look at it!

Then after it was all put together, me and my handy assistant neice, Abby, set to work repainting it turquoise! It was looking a little… ahem… weathered. ;)

Then Mama and I argued over where it should live in the new garden.  Here’s where it ended up, joined by a potted begonia and a turquoise puppy dog planter. :)

It’s located right next to the gate into the lower yard, so hopefully it will get a lot of use when we are down there working this summer! 
Thanks old garden swing for lending your life to the new bench!

Now you know what to do with that old swing you just can’t throw away… or maybe that’s just me with old swing problems. :)

While we are down here in the garden, how about an update?

Mama came last weekend and tilled between all the garden rows as well as all the area where we will plant grass.  It was becoming a weed fest, so that took care of those for a while!  While she was hard at work tilling, I planted some more lilies, purple speedwell, and bee balm in the sun bed.

I also finally finished stringing the bean supports.  The beans are reaching up and twining around the strings!

The corn is getting up there, too!  And we have our first pumpkin:

The last thing we did on Saturday was build this little rock wall in front of our big tree.  It’s only about halfway finished, but we ran out of rocks and had to quit. :)  It’s going to be quite cute when it’s filled in behind with plants!

Still needs more raking, root pulling, and rock picking.  :)  Oh, and mulch…

Stay tuned!