Besides flowers, my belief is no garden is complete without some accessories, a.k.a. junk and I have a lot of junk, including much driftwood and rocks. As far as statue-type artwork goes, some were bought, others received as gifts. When I started making hypertufa sculptures, my garden "accessories" mushroomed and they were larger accessories, too. I used to introduce each item separately but in updating outdated pages in 2010, I decided to simplify this one. I think, for now, just pictures of my pets and artwork in their garden settings will suffice.

The following are my personal creations:

Soldier - Painted terra cotta pots (fashioned after one I saw in Hartland, NB)
Fish Pond - Painted concrete stepping stone
Pot Man - Small terra cotta pots
Hypertufa Sculptures (in the order they appear): Treeman, Face, Fish, Otter, Haunted House, Curses the Elephant, Gnome, Ugly Stickman
Followed by Hypertufa Accessories: Stepping Stone, Edging (used molds for these two)

My Cat Tale

This was before I learned about sculpting with hypertufa.

I wanted a cat for my garden, but I couldn't find a concrete one anywhere. There were frogs and dogs and deer and other wild animals galore, but no cats! So I got another one of my IDEAS. I thought, "I made a snow cat. I made concrete mushrooms. I can make a concrete cat." I didn't have a form; I thought I could just go freehand. I bought a bag of concrete mix and parked myself on the patio (lined with plastic) with a big basinful of the mix and a bucket of water. And tried to pretend it was snow. However, mixed concrete doesn't work like snow. It is heavy. A wet ball of concrete wants to become a pancake. My tall, round cat ended up not so tall and round. My son, Robert, made the observation, "It looks like your snow cat but sadly affected by gravity." My husband named him "Stumpy". I did not want his name to be Stumpy, but nothing else seemed to fit. Then his tail broke and Pete said that made him doubly Stumpy. Well, I fixed his tail and happily painted him and gloss sprayed him. He really turned out so gosh-darn cute (if I do say so myself)!!! I decided to call him Sherman - he's like a little Sherman tank. He is also super heavy! He looks like a Sherman but I guess his "full" name will always be Stumpy Sherman.

Here, finally are the pictures.
LEFT - My snow cat (which was actually 5 ft. tall) CENTER LEFT - Unpainted Sherman
CENTER RIGHT - Finished cat! RIGHT - In the garden, with disheveled whiskers

And, last but not least, my flower gate (5 feet wide X 4.5 feet high). I started this in 2007 but did absolutely nothing on it in 2009. Here is a recap on the progress, the third picture being where I left off in 2008.

And here it is, finally finished on July 24, 2010:

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