Lost Word of the Day - Yelve

yelve	n	1000 -1886
dung-fork; garden-fork; to use such a fork
With her yelve and hoe never far from hand, she grew her crops the old-fashioned way.

When I saw today's lost word I was reminded of one of my all-time favorite gardening forum websites. It's called Garden Junk, and it's pretty amazing. People show off creations where they've used everything from bowling balls to bathtubs to spruce up their yards. Oh yeah, this goes beyond my brother's first ex-wife planting pansies in the old toilet he failed to remove from the front lawn after completing some home repairs. These people are a weird mix of innovation and idiosyncratic. Here are some of the ones that caught my eye.

This is an angel, meant to go on a cemetery plot. The junk artist has this to say about it:

Hopefully her wings [made from a ceiling light panel] will stay on. The GE II [adhesive] is seeming kind of iffy. I have it lightly wired, but doubtful it's strong enough to hold them. She has a solar light in her chest as well :o) There is a white vase inside the clear vase base. I have a piece of rebar that will go inside of it and be set in a container of concrete that goes inside of the marble vase in the headstone. That way she shouldn't fall over. 

Maybe it's because I haven't seen it glowing, but I'm without words at the moment.

My younger son has a pair of cowboy boots that hurt his feet. Like a bad, codependent relationship that's hard to walk away from, his boots cause him nothing but pain and agony every time he wears them for more than an hour or so. I'd love to do this with them.

This person kills me. Those glass insulators could sell for anywhere from $30 - 45 each on eBay.

I've seen a lot of crazy bowling ball art in my time, but this one puts a whole new spin on it.

This next one kind of makes me want to apologize to my husband for ever wanting to try this years ago. Thankfully blue bottles were difficult to find at the time (unlike they are now -- thanks, Budweiser!) and my short attention span was directed to something else before the project could ever get off the ground.

We actually made these and gave them to my mom and mother-in-law one year for Mother's Day. My mother-in-law still has hers hanging from the dogwood tree in the back yard of her upscale townhouse located not too far from Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C. Every time we visit and the patio door in her kitchen is open, we're treated with the soothing tones of what sounds like a very expensive set of wind chimes that, in reality, cost next to nothing to make from scratch.

Know what this next one is? No really, guess. Look closely at the lovely mosaic below. Still no clue? It's the West Virginia State Flower -- otherwise known as a satellite dish! That's right. Someone turned it into a really large birdbath to go beneath the condensation line on their A/C unit. In my yard, it would double as a mosquito breeding ground. (Please, do not leave me messages on how to solve the problem of mosquitoes breeding. It's easier to just not keep stagnant water around the house whenever possible.)

A bedpan wind chime is something that I will likely never, ever put in my yard. While in its own way it is a step up from planting flowers in a toilet, every time the wind clanked the chimes together I'd be tempted to say, "That sounds like crap!" and then giggle at my own pun.

Here's a coffee pot person. People usually stack up glass dishes, glue them together, and stick them in their yard as a kind of ornamental totem. I could never do this, as things that are breakable often get broken in a house of boys. As "art" this coffee pot person is more creative than just gluing dishes together and sticking it in a flower bed.

And last but not certainly not least, a silverware dragonfly for my friend Dawn. This one actually makes me want to go to the local thrift store and waste the afternoon playing with old silverware. I could see it as part of a set of wind chimes. Oh, the possibilities!

Hopefully the weather in wherever you are reading this is as gorgeous as the lovely spring morning I'm enjoying as I write it. There are certainly no April Showers in the forecast for me today. Maybe I'll have to mosey on over to the thrift store so I can begin creating some junk for my own gardens.