On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 12:14:25 -0800, (Jan
Flora) wrote:



You can move into my neighborhood any time you want, Pat!
I'm practicing to be a curmudgeon when I'm old. So far, I'm
just eccentric and grouchy, but hey, it's a start! Maybe you
could give me some pointers ;-)

I think the old tires idea is a dandy : ) To be *really* tacky,
she could whitewash the tires, or spray paint them gold or silver.
Oh, and maybe she could start collecting those concrete statues
that people put on their lawns, but paint them. Not just one or two
statues, but a whole bunch of them. All painted to look "life-like."
And string up multi-colored Christmas lights and light them up
every night, not just during the holidays. Lights that light up in
sequence or that blink off and on.

Oh, I got it -- get one of those plywood lawn ornaments that look
like the hind end of a fat lady who's bent over. (My mom's neighbor
has one of them. I shake my head every time I drive by the dang thing.)


These are all excellent ideas! I LOVE them... Did you
forget the plastic flamingoes?

Another good idea - but drastic - that I have actually SEEN
done (and it *was* done to spite the neighbors) was to have
an entire house painted in bright red, white, and blue
horizontal stripes...it was truly frightful!

For several reasons, we *are* using tire gardening, btw, we
will have about 60 'round raised solar-collecting planters'
in our garden shortly -we need to place about 10 more and
then it's finished.

This is in the back yard, and not easily visible by anyone
but our two immediate neighbors. So far, the 'tire
gardening' is working out very well for us, and I really
like it very much. (We could not have afforded enough wood
or cement blocks to make conventional raised beds.)

A major reason we're doing it is that I cannot garden flat
on the ground anymore, I have too much chronic joint/muscle
pain. We bought a 'rolling garden seat' affair and now I
can sit comfortably on it, and happily tend each
tire-planter. There are other reasons too: horrible heavy
clay instead of soil - we're filling the tires with
purchased spent-mushroom soil.

Anyway, I am going to TRY making pretty planters out of
tires also - see
http://www.tirecrafting.com/funbook2...canpottery.htm

I don't know whether we can actually turn the tires inside
out with only ONE sidewall cut off, but we're going to try.

If we succeed, then I'll paint them. I like the
blue-striped one at the web-page above - I don't like the
ones with stands. I wouldn't stripe them, just use a plain
color.

*If* we come up with something presentable, I'll use them in
the front yard for strawberries - maybe a 3-tired strawberry
garden (different sized tires). I'll also use them on our
front porch for flowers, again *if* we actually produce
something good-looking. Our house is white, with dark
blue-green trim - I'd probably paint them to match the trim.

Pat