Still More Garden Knickknackery

   

Darning Needle Plant Marker Throughout the garden where most folks would mark the location of a bulb or die-back perennial with a stick so as not to accidentally dig it up while planting other things, I've used vintage wooden darning needles. I was in a junk shop one day & saw a big ugly vase, with a sign attached that said, "Darning Needle Bouquet, $25.00." As there were about fifty wooden needles big ones & small ones, it seemed not too much to pay. I grabbed the needles out of the vase & took them to the check out, where I was told, "The vase was included in the price." It was a really ugy vase but what the heck. The vase has by now gone to St Vincent de Paul's, but the darning needles have been very handy in the yard.

   

Birdfeeder in Winter This worn out birdfeeder was photographed last winter (2001) from the deck, when snow was on the trees in the background. We've since moved this feeder onto a sheltered area of the deck, & hung a bigger even more rustic feeder from the iron hanger.

   

Nymph This naiadic goddess was a gift for Granny Artemis. This plaque ended up hanging from one of the beams of the back yard deck, from whence the naiad poors water from a pot upon the garden. The water pot was an ancient symbol of the Goddess Cybele, whose name written in Hittite pictographs included two pots representing her breasts. In Sumerian myth, the Great Mother fashioned the first races of humanity on a potter's wheel, which is why humanity is "reckoned as earthen pots, the work of a potter's hands" [Lamentations 4:2]. Every near- or mid-eastern woman who ever strode forth with a pot on her shoulder or on her head was an embodiment of the Mother Goddess. Thus the pot represents the matriarch Rebekah, for had Rebekah not brought a pot to a certain well on a certain day, there would never have been an Israel [Genesis 24:13-46]. Pots were kept in the Jerusalem temple & before the altar because of Zephaniah's saying, "Every pot in Jerusalem & Judah shall be sacred."

   

A Pile of String Sometimes even little piles of compost or gardening rubble can appear decorative to me. This pile of string & burlap soon to be dashed into the garbage bin consisted of the leavings from having planted new trees & cutting away the tops of burlap. If you look closer you'll see a pair of rusty scissors on the top of the pile. Those scissors just turned up while digging a hole for one of the new trees.

   

Ye Rusty Scissors Later when I threw away the "decorative" pile of string & burlap bits, I set the dug-up rusty scissors on the edge of the front door stoop, as I couldn't quite bear to toss them. I have no intention of ever throwing them away.

   

Continue to page four of:
GARDEN KNICKKNACKERY

   

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