A Tour of the Garden, with Added Scarecrow

We share our garden with our next door neighbors as they have a bit of yard and we do not. In previous years, we've grown but a very few things in a tiny space beside our front porch as front yard is all we've got. This year, Papa talked Chris and Brad, our twenty-something bio-medical engineering PhD student neighbors, into digging up a bit of their unused back yard to grow good things in the dirt. They were all about it. Thus we have our massive cucumber plants and tangle of home-built trellis on which to grow them.

From the back corner of our house, we look at an angle through the neighbors' driveway towards the garden.Over the driveway, we approach the bit of yard...
Our cucumbers are massive, our tomatoes staked and growing, our pumpkin & squash mishmash threatens to overtake everything, and our beans are already yielding results.Last weekend, while we were visiting the grandparents to celebrate Aunt Natty's graduation, I asked Papa what I should do for Art Day this coming week. He said we should build him a scarecrow (though we have no crows eating our vegetables...yet). When Art Day rolled around, we didn't really do much of anything as the children were interested in merely playing with toys and chasing each other around like crazed monkeys. So I began work on the scarecrow all by myself. By the weekend, I completed it.
Jon's plastic owl also helps ward off unwanteds. Together, the owl, the scarecrow, and our sparkly-loving gnome form an intimidating alliance.
The scarecrow is comprised mostly of trash. His head was a grouping of plastic bags stuffed with a piece of foil overlaying it into an onion net bag.
The left eye is milk jug lid, beads, sparklies, and feathers.
The right eye of milk lid tie, juice lid, beer lid, PBR pin, button, button, rivet, and bead.
The arms are strung-together seedling packs (the threes cut into singular units, handy for stacked arms, strung on excess inherited acrylic yarn).
Bastian and I made the wavy, gay fingers together of plastic beads on wire.


The chest cavity is a salad container filled with artificial organs.
White plastic cutlery forms the ribcage.
The heart is stuffed felt, the lungs pink tulle leftover from our second wedding stuffed into more onion sleeves.
The liver is stuffed fabric (leftover from the teepee my mother made the boys for Christmas 3 years ago), the stomach the same fabric stuff into a garlic sleeve, and the intestines are braided yarn.
The stomach and the intestines are actually connected, via a lovely clump of hot glue. I'm quite fond of that touch, even if no one can see it.
We imagine that the tremendously bright colors will fade over the summer and it's my belief that I'll have to restuff the organs back into the chest cavity. That's what you get for walking around with your organs exposed, I suppose.