wine bottles

I have ask all my friends to please save me their empty wine bottles for a garden project I am also working on. Jason and I started out our yard with really big intentions when we settled on this property. I was a horticulture student at the time and had access to A LOT of plants. We built our front yard garden while I was in school and it has evolved over the years with the black eyed susan's spreading to every corner of the yard and the more fragile plants getting choked out by the ground ivy that we must have picked up in a bag of leaves or in some mulch we bought. Every year before this past Spring (Spring of 2010) we have gotten out in the yard got it all weeded and mulched and tried to fight off that creeping plant to no avail. So, we have decided to pull out as many of the plants as we can save, transplant them somewhere there is no ivy and move them back assuming they survive the move next spring. Last year, we gave up and let the ivy have the beds because Jason was tending the big garden in the field (which we have decided is more than we can handle in our lives right now and he is revamping the backyard to be more productive) and I just have so little time for gardening. Our focus is just getting those beds to looking good again so that even if they are empty they aren't covered in weeds. We are going to loose some plants, but my hope is that if they are all cleaned up and ready to start somewhat a new in spring I can throw in some new herbs and really think about what I want to be growing and using in our home. I wasn't thinking about anything being useful to me when we started out and we have a small greenhouse in the back now that I can start from scratch pretty easily. There are few things as awesome as homemade tinctures and salves and teas all from the garden - not to mention how much we all love having flowers in our homes.

So, where do the wine bottles come in? Well, when I was in school I always wanted to create a more Howard Finster feel to our land. Maybe not quite as extreme as he had his, but maybe - I want it evolve into whatever it becomes. I love the outward expression of your home being a creative entity as much as your spirit. Because if your home and garden ooze creativity it feeds the creative spirit inside so much more. You know how when you are passionately working on a project (at least for me) so many more always come into my mind and my issue is that I don't have time to make all the art that I want to, so I have to pick and choose. This project is easy because I only have a few wine bottles at a time to put in, so it only takes a few minutes and the kids helped with this first row helping to set them. It took us maybe an hour because we had so many to start with. We discovered putting a stick in the ground to stand them on made all the difference in getting them to stand properly and right next to each other - otherwise getting them side by side wasn't working. I'm excited. My plan is to go around any area in the garden that is supposed to be not for foot traffic with wine bottles. So far, I love the look in front of India's roses and I have other projects with mirrors and glass - something similar to mosaics in mind to go behind the roses as time and money permits - and the kids will be able to help me with everything I want to do. Double bonus, I'm doing something creative with my kids and we get to do whatever we want! So, SAVE ME YOUR WINE BOTTLES, please.

Here's what we have so far...


I even like the labels still being on. It gives them a worn look.


Some of the bottles were already upside down in the garden, but they were being placed rather haphazardly, so I'm just bringing a little organization to it.


We don't need beer bottles, save those for Jason Bray's beer making. As you can see in the picture, they don't quite fit with the others. Who knows, maybe I'll end up using some somewhere along the way, but for now, I like the wine bottles.