LOL! Well she sure knew where to post it for the maximun impact....
I could add a few in house abominations as well.
Remembering when it was "cute" to use hand towels with clip on curtain rings for bathroom curtains...., little resin rabbits and kitties with soulful eyes on every table, and the table in the dining area of the kitchen, seen in a friend's house, who lives alone and always eats in a TV tray in the den....always set for 4, place mats, napkins and napkin rings, no silver no plates or glasses...
Why? Every time I have been to eat, we eat in the dining room or the patio?
And now now, Alexa... I sort of like the blue bottle trees....but I am having trouble finding enough people to drink the wine that comes in the blue bottles to make a good showing.
Somehow green J and B bottles aren't quite the same!!!
LOL!
You are so baad....but I noticed you didn't post to the thread!
Linda C

Yep - just call me chicken!

If you need "blue bottles" there is a bottled water I can get locally that comes in 1 liter blue glass bottles, want me to save them for you? LOLOLOL! Also, I think I can get red ones too if you want... you could have red & J&B green for Xmas, red, Stoly white & blue for Memorial Day and Fourth of July, etc.

I also never understood the cut in half wine bottles that are stuck in the ground so only the bottom shows and used as flower bed edging. I just imagine hitting one with the weed whacker and broken glass flying everywhere. Or the people that hang the old AOL CD's on their trees. What is up with that?!?!

It was still an amusing read tho.....

Alexa

Alexa,

I'm usually pretty OK with whatever people decide they want to do with their houses. It's what they do to plants that can make me just shake my head.

Plant Amnesty is in Seattle. I got their website a few years ago from the gardening side. I LOVE these pictures of pruning techniques!

Here, pruning evergreens into 'meatballs' is a common sight. For a long time in New England, there was little diversity available & most homes had evergreen foundation plantings. Long overgrown & rather than replacing...out came the pruning shears.

There's a cottage about a block from us that's a good example. The non-descript evergreen shrubs have grown almost as tall as the cottage. In an attempt to tame the savage beasts...they have been severely pruned into globes. This, of course, has led to interior die-back resulting in this green/brown coloration. Then, to add insult to injury...that bright red mulch covers every inch of ground (I'm not using the word "soil" because I don't think that's what they have! lol)

The result, IMO, looks like "spinach meatballs swimming in maranara sauce"! rofl

I'll see if DH can get a picture after they've got this year's marinara sauce poured over the meatballs!

/tricia

Here is a link that might be useful: Hilarious Pruning Examples

I have seen that site before, and it is really funny in a pathetic way. My neighbor nextdoor is kind of like that. He savagely shears back all the forsythia and azaleas in Feb every year then gripes that they don't bloom as well as theothers in the area. I've tried to tell him to prune AFTER they bloom the late spring, but he doesn't like all that "extra" growth during the... er... um... growing season. LOLOLOLOL!

The other one that cracks me up - same neighbor - has all his evergreens delimbed.... from the bottom up 5 feet because he doesn't want to get hit with branches when he is riding his mower or walking around. It is really hilarious looking! They all look like knobby kneed women hiking their skirts up too high! LOLOLOLOL!

If it ever stops raining, I will try to get a photo....

Alexa

Okay, I better stay away from that forum. I agree with most of what the OP says. If that was his/her original writing, he/she is pretty darn good.

I have a neighbor whose yard looks like an explosion in a garden center. She can't drive by a Walmart without buying the latest cutesy item. She has an entire troll family. The Township finally got after her for blocking the sidewalk with overgrown plants and displays -- like rusty a wheelbarrow filled with dying plants. Oddly, she buys stuff but doesn't keep it watered.

Unfortunately she lives on the corner so it's the first thing you see on my street.

I absolutely can't stand those evergreen twists -- that description of looking like a Dairy Queen is right on.

What's a blue bottle tree??

I don't believe Blue Bottle Trees are indigenous to New England but, like all invasives, they are creeping into our landscape! Must be global warming... :)

Here's some examples from around the world. Click on the pixs to see them in full glory!

/t

Here is a link that might be useful: Blue Bottle Trees

I always though bottle trees were southern in origin and are creeping north... I could be wrong about that though.....

Alexa

I hope they don't creep out here to California.

I agree with the OP on that thread, and the responses were funny.. Thanks for sharing!

Oh jeez. Looks like the recycling truck hit a bump and the bottles landed in a tree. I think trees are pretty on their own and don't need to sport bottles!

That is a funny thread. The follow up posters sure got their backs up. I suppose it wasn't wise to trash trash on the junk forum.

I thought it was a well-written and funny post too. But it perhaps should have been sent in as an editorial, not posted on a garden junk-lover forum, lol. And I agreed with a lot of what she wrote.

Something must have happened to that post, I got an "oops, I couldn't find that post" message....

Annie

Sad that they removed it. It was hysterical. And I took no offense that I am "guilty" of a couple things she slammed.

But it did make me think of what my neighbors must think of me. And I made an appt to donate the four slabs of granite that have "temporarily" "graced" my front lawn - for OMG is it already close to two years???!!! - to Habitat for Humanity Restore.

May I post again on this? It's so close to my heart!!
Sorry....but I won't be making the trip for blue water bottles!
But don't knock blue...On my cooking peninsula sits a blue bottle which once held 12 oz of a very expensive eiswein, It has a pourer inserted into the top and it holds my evoo for a drizzle here and there.
I engineered the radical pruning of some yews at the church....they had done the ball, dead on the outside thing....verging on the parking lot....so I got a helper and we whacked them back!
In a year they are now lovely....wonder how long it will take before they are a shell of green with a brown inside??

In the town home complex where my son and his wife had their first home, they hired some "gardeners" who got on a ladder and trimmed the flowering crab apple trees into giant lolly pops!!...It hurt my eyes to look at it!

My nextdoor neighbor had a load of mulch delivered in May of '07....they filled their meager "gardens" and left the rest of the stuff there. They backed their car into it, shoveled around it....but never moved it.
This april, her parents came for a week's visit and "George" (pronounced Hor hay) moved the pile into other shrub borders, Whew!
And 2 weeks later, after George and Flavia went home, the people next door ordered a double load of mulch delivered....to the end of their driveway! LOL!

Now about blue bottle trees......I believe the practise originated in Aftica and came here with the slaves....something about scaring away JuJu or bad omens....and I sure need all of that I can get!
I would love to have a blue bottle tree.....just a small one, a mini bottle tree, from eiswein bottles....out among the big blue hosta.
But after buying the hosta, I can'ta fford the eiswein! LOL!
As someone once said....they are not "OKP" meaning Our Kind of People.....and I am sure those with the neatly trimmed spiral bushes, and those with the windmill among the tulips think that those of us who have "sloppily" trimmed bushes and nothing "interesting" in the yard are not their kind of people.
Linda C....remembering how boring all would be if we all had the same tastes.

It was rather strange that the post was made on the Garden Junk forum???

I always thought the bottle tree was Southern in origin too. I can remember seeing some in the bare front yards of what we called "shacks." But the bottles were not blue, they were usually clear glass, brown, green, whatever color they found. They bottle trees were most often found in yards where African Americans lived, I think. This was on our drive to the SC coast in the flat lands found between the Piedmont and the Atlantic ocean called the coastal plain.

I never heard of a blue bottle tree before, and after looking at the link they still don't evoke a memory.

Linda C - Too bad this thread didn't pop up about 3 months ago, because a local liquor store had some blue bottled pinot grigio on a ridiculous sale. I had used some of that brand before for cooking and it was fine, so unfortunately I bought a case of it. Well every bottle was turned, and my argument didn't get a refund. So I poured them out and threw them out.

Threw out those lovely blue bottles???
That same blue bottled pinot grigio ( or was it a Rhein wine?) was on sale around here.....and I invited friends for dinner, and they brought a bottle....:(.
I didn't keep the bottle though because they were 1.75 Liter bottles....and would have bent most small trees to the ground!
Can't you just see a small bottle tree hiding among the hostas?
I think I am going on a search for the perfect branch and then collect small bottles....be on the look out for interesting one serving bottles and split bottles of wine...
I wonder what the neighbors will say! LOL!

Look, google conveniently cached a copy of the thread. I was dying to read it and so I went searching.

Here is a link that might be useful: Google cached copy

I had never heard of the blue bottle trees, I'll go to bed with more knowledge tonight, lol.....

Thanks, Robinkate, I kind of thought it was funny, but she never mentioned my favorite, the "bathtub madonna". LOL

I just really don't care about my neighbor's yards, although I did post a picture of that toilet plunger, stuck by the handle into a flower bed made of an old truck tire, filled with bird seed and labelled "redneck bird feeder". Hey, I thought it was funny and it wasn't in MY yard, so it was OK.

I don't have anything in my yard that resembles yard art, not even a "water feature" or a bird bath. I have tulips by the driveway, a flowering almond in the front and some lily of the valley. The backyard contains the swimming pool and a trampoline. The house could use a coat of paint but then my taxes will go up. (grin) I mow only on major holidays and try to convince Elery that it's environmentally conscious to avoid spewing fumes into the atmosphere more than necessary.

I do have some herbs in the backyard too, now that I think of it.....

Annie

Here it is, was copied by someone before getting deleted.

Posted by vikireed New Jersey (My Page) on
Wed, May 6, 09 at 9:49
I've been enjoying the older 'what not to do' in the forums. I'd like to start a new one because there are things left unsaid.....

Fully agree on the shearing forsythias, the over and misuse of landscape lighting, the dairy queen twist of stark topiaries, for sure dyed mulches gotta go, too many evergreens, bug homicide and plastic flowers-including plastic ivy trailing up mailboxes...

HOW ABOUT:

1. A landscaping look that starts with incredibly uniform stone veneer cladding on their house? It just has the rustic appeal of a plaid jacket and sets a bad tone for the rest of the yard.

2.Grand, Doris Duke style circular driveways....carved from small front yardage on lots that used to have old homes but now have ranches converted to two-stories (kind of like wearing a tiara with overalls).

Let's not even forget the binary code looking arrangement of immature bushes, shrubs and grocery store annuals that border and fill the big center display of these circular drives. Reminds me of the drunk guy at the party who's friends drew a frito bandito mustachio on his face before he sobered up.

3. The ubiquitous Water Feature To Nowhere. We've all seen it. Someone establishes a round or kidney shaped water feature as close to their external front porch outlet as possible , whether it makes sense or not. It's small, and set so far back from the road that no one 'enjoys' it, and the owner probably isn't sitting at the front window proudly gazing while unable to hear the trickle because of the street traffic. These infamous things of non beauty also often feature fibreoptic color changing schemes and instead of a spray or spew the water gurgles like a water main busted in the middle of Brooklyn.

4. Gazing balls and other balls. A single gazing ball on display is distracting. If you pulled into your driveway and saw a teaspoon laying there, it would have the same artistic flow. They're meant for secret spots full of soulful personal touches. Seen in the company of blue glass bottle trees and interesting boulders. Where they can be really examined and where they have the scale to work in their surroundings. Gold is NEVER a good idea unless you're royalty and it's real.

5. Wind Chimes with handy craft danglers. You've seen them. Every size and length...some yards and porches are cursed by them...like a mechanical wisteria.

Sometimes the chimes reflect a personal collecting fetish...like Betty Boop, the Pittsburgh Steelers, or Dachsunds and Dragonflies. Often they are hung so close to their homes that any severe weather results in a thoroughly violent raking of the owner's siding not to mention not a single musical tone. You get the feeling that if you came in the night and added, oh, 29 or so new sets of chimes, the owner would never know.

Too much of one element, like "tacky" or "cheap" is not a design choice unless you consider wearing all yellow from shoes to top...a design choice for every day.

6. HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!! I'm not a hater, I love a good celebration much as anyone , even more because I'm an obnoxious child at heart.

But...the flags...the mailbox covers...the door coverings...doorknob adornments...it takes more effort and thought to remove them than to throw them in your cart at Lowes after a post -holiday price slash. Please stop it.

7. Mosquito Lovers Buffet! Don't you love it when a neighbor abandons efforts to use their composter... leaves the odd trashcan or container where the wind took it...pretends the filthy kiddie pool isn't really there because they're not using it...pretend their clogged gutters are still directing water somewhere...imagines the slime green bird bath is performing a real aviary service....when in fact all these containers and more are collecting mosquitio eggs and hatching creepy looking larvae which turn into the reason you can't put a fire pit in your back yard or hang outside past 2 pm in the summer.

8. TIRED OF TIRED? Recylcing is good. Cutting a bunch of tires in half to make a garden border that looks like a rubber loch ness monster is not. Being green is important, sticking a tire at the highest peak on your curb appeal and filling it with purple and yellow pansies is something you do when you've run out of coffee cans or old toilets.

9. McMansions where farms used to be. There's a reason those 1-2 million dollar 'homes' have no mature trees, no wild deciduous organic appeal, no shade or heart.

WHy don't you insist on trees that are at least 10 years old and not 9 months old when you pay that much for a chicken coop?

Because they're sitting on 1/2 acre 'lots' that used to be rows of cabbage and strawberries. Where fertile red dirt once filled the air and town with living growing things and the sounds of tractors and open skyline with fantastic sunset views and bushels of giant eggplants and cantelope sweetly filling the nose of passers by....now we see cheaply made 6-8 car garages attached to vast and poorly insulated high end warehouses. The facades are faux stone and brick...but only on the front. The windows from their world too small and out of whack with the logical beautiful sensical structures that used to fill our historic townships. The plantings are anal and no maintenance and it shows. WHen the owners look out their side windows...they see their neighbors watching tv just a few feet away...just enough room in the back of hte property for a spanking new barely to be used $12,000 redwood swingset playgym. These artless buildings seem to actually frown and have no shame or guilt for being what they are where they are.

9. Iron fencing. It's the ultimate statement. "I need to cordon off my property but I don't care if everyone can see into my yard or climb over the fence. Mostly I never want to think about the fence again, so what if I don't have a victorian 3 story, I never have to paint this badboy, and it has an electronic gate!

10. STUCCO. This is a trend that I mention because it infests the rest of your landscaping choices. THis is not Southern California. This is not Italy or Spain. Stucco is uggo. Just like you can't have a cactus or a giant Palm tree in your yard , you should just back away from the stucco siding, the claypot roofs and adobe color schemes. This is a COLONIAL HISTORICAL area. Not a potential 'hot property' listing for your personal investment adventures.

11. Two Chairs next to each other in the front yard.
Even on a nice day, no one occupies them. Because you're on display like a museum diorama, because you're getting bitten by midges, because you can't sit there and drink beer and smoke Marlboros without attracting the wrong kind of attention, because you don't live on a street where ANYthing is actually happening to watch and there's no open sky view across the street and because we don't live in an ear where your friends stroll down the road to come say hi and sit next to you. The chairs are so silly no one even steals them.

12. A single small boulder. Not a honkin spectacular huge specimen which looks like you mugged Central Park West's woodlands....Just a smallish boulder sitting all alone at the head of your driveway....or off center in the front yard. What are you trying to say with this one rock? Is this where you buried your last victim? Do you think it will grow into the massive gorgeous boulder from Kentucky we all dream about possessing? Shhhh, shush shush...don't answer. Get the rock company, at least 6 or 7 rocky friends. Make a tiny suburban stonehenge or pyramid or something more declarative. It's a boulder. Either it should make a statement or be given to a turtle to catch rays on.

13. Grocery store gardeners. Heather is just heather, lavender too, and no matter where you get marigolds or pansies they're still what they are...but if your sole consideration and main sources of garden life and supplies are Acme or Wegmans, you don't deserve to garden.

I get it, in late September when the front of grocery store is full of end of season sales, I say go for it. Plant it, overwinter it and you've got a great deal.

But if you fill your yard with all you can fit into your Shoprite cart then you've not only paid too much but you lack vision. Just get a hanging tomato plant set up and pay someone to do it for you. The cost would be very similar.

14. Lord Of The Crazy Sunflowers. Sunflowers rock. Especially the unconventional ones. But on their own , it's a bit like seeing a serial killer chained to your front porch, or a bunch of serial killers. Maybe they're just cousins 5th removed who fell off tractors and they eat cereal out of a trough and hamburgers by the dozen on Friday nights for somethign special but they are chained to your front porch or iron fencing ...just staring and hovering and watching you...

15. Coral Bells, Coral Bells, Hostas all the way...Oh what fun it is to plant mums all night and day-AY! I know they're asy to propogate and they're like free plants all year every year, but EVERY DIY garden, curb appeal, landscape show slaps these perrenials down in military rows. Mix it up, it's bad cake design.

16. Statues: Things That Stare At You With No Eyes....
Doric columns and Sitting Lions belong in front of libraries and court houses, stop it. There's a reason that 8 foot Neptune with Triton Statue is STILL sitting in the garden center, 30 years later with an $800 price tag. Cherubs are worthless if you can see the joiner seam all the around their fake baby bodies. Stop with the statues of Frogs Doing Human Things.

Commit or run screaming. I had a neighbor who had fake deer, fake kitties on the roof, fake birds, fake bunnies, chipmunks, squirrels, turtles, frogs, raccoons, mice, beagles, and lizards everywhere. In the yard, on the roof, on the front porch and front stoop, holding lamps at the end of the driveway by the mailbox, crawling up the mailbox post....THAT was impressive and I had NO problem with it. I fully expected a plaster Snow White to come out to the car with a thermos of coffee every day. I smiled when I walked or drove by.

But STOP putting statues that don't express an artistic movement you love and understand, a gardening movement you want to emulate down to the "T", or something of true one of a kind beauty without being hideous. Gnomes cannot be hollow or plastic. Japanese characters on stones made of resin are QUESTIONABLE at best. Dolphins leaping-painted or no...probably belong at your local Marina or seafood restaurant at best.

Keep trying. No one's got a green thumb to start with. But make the effort. Don't sleepwalk through it. It's a flower bed, not a Snugli.

What a perfectly miserable person Vikireed must be.

I'm in the south and never have seen a blue bottle tree.

OMG - I think it's funny - gotta love that Metro-NY humor! m

I'm glad so many people found this funny - every time I re-read it I am laughing so hard I am crying by the end. It is just hilarious!

And Linda - I double dawg dare you to make a bottle tree AND post pictures - my neighbor is throwing away an old bowling ball and I am sooooooooooooooo tempted to glue pennies all over it and put it in my garden! ROFLPMP!

Alexa

OMG Alexa, Pennies on a bowling ball! That is gotta be the funniest!!! I think if I put up a bottle tree it would be more fun drinking to empty the bottles....and anyway - my neighbor's son would use it as target practice for his bb gun... -maria

- so for those pennies - would you need super glue or epoxy???

Now Now.....those "penny balls" are pretty neat...I hear that it takes $3.00 worth of pennies to cover one.
I spent some time looking for the perfect bottle tree "tree"....but nothing spoke to me...
Meanwhile I had company this weekend who were adding to my bottle supply.
Do you think empty long neck beer bottles would be tacky for a bottle tree??
Linda c

Ugh. I'm with beverlyal -- its hard for me to find something appealing about one long judgmental rant. Are there lots of things that other people like that I think are ugly? Sure. Do I feel the need to tear them down for it? Definitely not.

Here is a place for Sharon and Clive to see on their trip along Riyte 66.

Here is a link that might be useful: Route 66 Bottle Tree Farm

Now the people on the GJ Forum are annoyed with us. Oh dear, they do seem like nice people.

On my post above that would be Route 66 not Riyte 66. Monday morning fumble fingers.

Here is a link that might be useful: GJ thread

"Now the people on the GJ Forum are annoyed with us. Oh dear, they do seem like nice people."

Yea, but they need to get over it. I applaud the ones who allow that the OP didn't single out anyone, just expressed an opinion and agreed that opinions should be allowed to be expressed freely. Freedom of speech!

Someone over there (I don't remember the poster) mentioned Jackson Pollack, Andy Warhol and a handful of other modern artists as examples of similar art forms. Warhol painted ONE soup can, he didn't have 15 hanging in his living room. Pollack was a master painter that "veiled" his work with layers of color. Picassos cubist period was a view of a figure in the round, not from a single perspective (I'm unsure of the last, I think that was the cubist period, may have been one of his others). All of them produced evocative art. I don't get the same emotional rush looking at a tea cup glued to a lamp base. Maybe a single example of any one of those projects could be inspiring, it is the sheer volume of crap that makes it tacky.

I think it was Liz Taylor that said something to the effect of "If you are going out for the evening, get completely dressed, look in the mirror and remove one piece of jewelry." Its that sort of restraint the prevents one from crossing over to the epitome of bad taste.

Alexa

Just to keep us relevant to the cooking forum, I totally agree with this from that thread:
"Put a little bacon grease, butter, sugar, and salt in EVER-FREAKIN-THING!"

You know - the term has been right on the tip of my tongue... and it finally came to me!

It is KITSCH

Here is a link that might be useful: Kitsch

I don't know Alexa... While there is no doubt that freedom of speech is wonderful, frankly I think that poster's rant was just as tacky as he/she claims those garden displays are. There are plenty of places to air that type of "comedy" outside of a site that is a warm supportive community for the very people who value the thing that "comedy" puts down. As far as I can tell, only reason for the poster to air it on a site like the gardenjunk forum was to make as many people feel badly as possible.

Furthermore, while you may think that the sheer volume of garden junk is just tacky, frankly, I think that while one pink flamingo is tacky, a whole yard full of hundreds of them makes an artistic statement. Each person who crafts these teacup pieces or penny covered bowling ball has their own aesthetic, and finds the things they create aesthetically pleasing. Frankly I think that is the essence of making art, and don't see how these folks deserve to be looked down on because of it.

Just realized I said "frankly" three times in two paragraphs! I guess I was anxious about being a voice of dissent.

I had to Google Penny Covered Bowling ball to realize it is a legitimate fad right now.

Fearlessem, I'm with you. I didn't find it to be funny, just rude, and I believe the OP was a troll. I imagine the website monitors believed that to be the case, also, thus they removed the thread.

Sally

Really? People glue pennies on bowling balls?

Of course, I completely lack the decorating gene, so I don't do any of those things, and I don't decorate inside either. Truthfully, I thought Picasso was just too weird, so paintings of disjointed pieces of stuff don't excite me. I also hate color, but that doesn't mean that someone else shouldn't slap a Picasso print right in the middle of their red wall and be happy. I'd cringe, but I'd do it in private, LOL.

Ah well, right now I have a tractor and a disc sitting in the yard at the farm, next to a round bale feeder that needs welding and a pile of apple tree prunings. The neighbors don't complain about my spring cleaning, so I won't complain about the 7 dwarves living in THEIR front yard or the guy's hand lettered sign instructing me to slow down because there's a "bad a$$ bull".

As for the bacon grease, butter, sugar and salt, I agree completely, I know someone posted about chocolate covered bacon. (grin)

So, although I did find the post mildly entertaining, I think someone who would post that at a forum called "garden junk" had to just be trying to stir things up. For a new poster to post something like that on "garden junk" is, in my opinion, mean-spirited since it was clearly directed straight at that specific group of people.

Now, I'm all for freedom of speech, but we've discussed before that it's rude to "yuck my yum". LindaC loves lamb, I don't, but I also don't promptly post that it's disgusting and nasty if she posts that she had lamb for dinner.

The original poster, I think, chose her audience with the intent to insult them, no matter how many of us found it funny.

Annie

In this economy, someone might come along and pick the pennies off the bowling ball.

You know, this is what I love about this forum. So much good input, no matter the topic. It really helps me to look at things from different angles. There are lots of valid opinions -- often there is no right or wrong.

I never considered that the OP was baiting her audience. But of course she was! Why else say that on GJ? I hadn't even thought of that.

I read through all the previous posts, and Annie's last response pretty much sums up my feelings. I did find the piece amusing, but it probably hurt some feelings where it was posted.

My MIL has the most eclectic yard I've ever seen. She has a "Zen" moon garden on one side of the house, a "waterfall" in the front yard that has frogs (ceramic & resin) engaging in all kinds of human activities. The most original montage is composed of large rocks my FIL has fashioned into a set of table/chairs near the lamp post, which DH & I refer to as the "Flintstone Furniture."

MIL loves all this stuff and isn't hurting anyone with it. Luckily, she lives in a pretty isolated area, so no nearby neighbors are visually affected by it.

To each their own.........

I've been following this thread with interest. LOLOLOLOLOLOL! ~snicker & sigh~ It really is a funny thread, not to mention that this particular thread is funny too.

Yes, I'm from the South and we do have blue bottle trees in our area. I mostly see them along country roads.

I have a bottle tree and it brings me great delight every time I see it. Most of these bottles have a story behind them. Like that pink one you see. It came from a CF/KF/HD buddy from Houston. That old clear one used to hold the "medicine" for my DH Grandmother. The green one used to hold the homemade wine that my DH Grandfather used to make. This picture is taken from one of our gardens. This is a "tree" welded from rebar.

{{gwi:1447361}}

I also agree with Annie's last comments...to each his own. Ya gotta laugh at this!

Here is a link that might be useful: Ancient Bottle Tree Legend

Looking at RR's bottle tree, loving it and thinking that perhaps it's all in the artistic talent and eye of the maker.....and of course placement and lack of resin gnomes and frogs that make is pretty.

When he retired, my uncle started "making things" He had seen a wind chime made from various cut off bottles, with a hole drilled and carefully arranged so they all didn't clang together at once.
So he took to glomming on to every empty bottle he could find, cutting it and stringing it up and giving it away.
His next project was wind chimes made from forks and spoons strung on a bent coat hanger. They clanked in a breeze.
Then there was another man who took up rug hooking when he retired. He bought kits and tied knots like mad. Their house was covered with furry rugs, hanging on benches, on the back of the sofa, on floors and piled in a corner.
Another person took up needle point and in 5 or 6 years all available space was covered with needle point renditions of someone else's art. We had Pinky, Blue Boy, The Mona Lisa and even Van Gogh's sunflowers. A beautiful home was turned into a display of kitsch....but it kept them off the streets! LOL!

I have seen some very lovely "art" made from broken pottery....but I have also seen some stuff that is pretty much broken dishes glued to something.

The line between art and craft is fine.....and the line between craft and junk perhaps even finer....and some don't seem to see it.

As an example, I made a trip to New York several years ago to see Christo's Gates. I found it moving, exilerating and endlessly fascinating. I posted on another forum what I had done and how wonderful I thought it was.....and was booed and hooted at ridiculed for bothering to view something quite as silly as that.

Art doesn't need the approval of others to be "art". Van Gogh died penniless with a stash of things like whirling suns and swirling clouds and flowers beneath his bed. Pollock also died broke. Frieda Kahlo's work never sold until after her death when Madonna started collecting.

I have seen several gardens that were full of "repurposed" items, the toilet planter, the shoe planter, the frog under the hosta and the elf sitting on a rock. Some were lovely and charming, while a few others were a collection of junk.
What makes the difference? I guess it's the skill of the person putting it all together.

Scuse the ramble, I guess it always boils down to "To each his own" or "chacon a son gout", but I never understand why someone feels the need to defend their own taste, or feel insulted if someone else doesn't like what you like.
Why would anyone feel threatened because I don't like plastic gnomes in my yard, nor Robert Kincade (however he spells his name) on my walls nor canned soup in my casseroles?
It's your house, do what you like.
Linda C

Several here have made a point about how posting that commentary on the Garden Junk forum was deliberately pushing buttons. Can someone please explain that?

As I count it, exactly ONE of the 16 bullets are directly related to "junk". Bullet 8. The rest have to do with developments, landscaping, "mainstream" decorating, etc. (At least the way I read it, bottle trees were put in a positive light in bullet 4.)

I have no shame in maintaining my personal opinion that the post was funny commentary, even though I could have taken offense to some of it. To draw an analogy, my strong religious beliefs don't preclude me from watching and laughing at the likes of Bill Maher. Nor does being white stop me from laughing at black comedians who make fun of whites. Nor am I uncomfortable when white comedians make fun of blacks or other races. Comedians, not elected officials or organized groups. Of course even I have my limits. And I understand that just because I'm tolerant of this sort of thing doesn't mean I expect everyone else has to be as well. But in cases like this everyone has the choice to tune out, so let me point out that even if you count more than one item as being offensive to the audience to whom it was delivered, the name of the forum is called "Garden Junk." Not "Recycled Art" or something similar. "JUNK."

Am I wrong that I see the GJ folks as already lightheartedly mocking themselves by their mere participation in that forum by virtue of its name? Exactly what was so out of line in that 1/16th of a post as to cause such a stir?

You make some interesting points foodonastump. I guess to me, just because people lightheartedly poke fun at themselves (as the Garden Junk name does), doesn't necessarily mean they welcome someone who arrives on their site with the express purpose of making fun of them. It feels like the difference between laughing with someone and laughing at them. That post definitely didn't feel like it was laughing "with" the people who post on the Garden Junk forum.

I do see your point about the fact that most of the post wasn't dedicated solely to junk, and honestly without going back and re-reading the whole post, for me its that I walked away with the feeling that the poster was using humor as a barb, and was doing unsolicited towards a community they are not a part of. I certainly wouldn't go seek out a religious message board and post a lengthy Bill Maher-style "humorous" rant about religion -- that to me is really an attack masked as humor, placed in a forum that hadn't asked for that type of 'entertainment'. To me that's the essence of what the poster on Garden Junk did.

I also did not find it funny. The poster seemed to enjoy trying to make others feel bad, or at least inferior. If the sole purpose of a post is to belittle others or insult them, well,I find no humor in that.
And Karen, I just happen to love your bottle tree. It is cute, and the fact that each bottle has a special meaning to you is what makes it special.

When I finish here, I'm going out on my sun porch and look at my bottle tree in my side yard my brother welded out of rebar that has some special bottles of various colors on it, only 3 blue ones I believe. It's not too far from a couple of primitive birdhouses. Then further down the yard is a concrete sculpture I call the "Charleston Lady" that I picked up on a visit there. She's very pretty under a holly tree nestled among the plants. I have a few special things in my herb garden but I'm not going to take a poll to see if everyone approves of them or my yard....
they're there for me to enjoy. I've seen strange things, at least to me, in people's yards and I would be the first to admit that I wouldn't want them in my yard. Aren't we funny creatures?

I think several of the posters were right about the bottle trees originating in rural areas of the south especially in area of Mississippi or so I have read.

To each his own.

jude

Never did like the name Vicky.

You would use clear silicone, like the stuff for caulking, to attach pennies to the bowling ball. Small children are usually the culprits when the pennies get pryed off the balls.

The long neck beer bottles would look best on rebar of various lengths, stuck in a tall vase, or maybe a cute little galvanized bucket with a brick in the bottom, then filled with gravel to keep the rebar in place. Rebar is the metal rods that are used to reinforce concrete.

If it isn't your yard, and it isn't your stuff, and not your money paying for it, why should you be the one to have the valid opinion of whether it is good or bad?

I love that bottle tree of riverat's, and I love that it has a special meaning. I have one in my back yard, and it has meaning to me as well. And I didn't ask my neighbor if he thought I should have one. I don't care what my neighbor thinks about my bottle tree.

I am glad I read to the end. There are some nice people here.

Janie

lol