Our Yard | The Fountain

When we bought our house in 2006, we started with this. The fence had been brought down by a tree and the previous sets of owners of our joint properties (ours and the neighbors) had purchased the posts and panels for a new fence, but had only haphazardly put half of it up. We finished the fence a year or two later, but were stuck with this fountain which was a great idea but poor in execution. I love that the fountain provides a place for birds to bathe and drink (which they do) and provides ambience, but I’m not happy with several things.

First, the fountain is across the fence line. Our temporary solution was to join the fence on either side of the fountain and put up a lattice across the back. I’m sure this just annoys the heck out of neighbors. Second, the concrete block and the facade pasted onto it was cracking and falling apart. Third, the bricks used as a liner on top the bowl were chipping and flaking off. Fourth, the area is constantly becoming overrun with weeds and generally is just completely unmanageable. Fifth, there was no pump and the tubing was all jacked up. We bought a pump and got the fountain working again, but we still weren’t happy with it.

Eventually, I found some hard plastic whiskey barrel replicas at Mount Vernon’s Ace Hardware and I put them on either side of the fountain. I filled up the right one with three types of grass and a begonia. The left one will have shade-loving grass. Aaron tried to fix the leaking fountain with black plastic and some glue. It was ultimately unsuccessful because the heat warmed up the glue and made the plastic fall into the fountain.

I couldn’t take the weeds surrounding the fountain and the brick “patio” right in front of it. It all had to go. I had some help from Denny and another individual.

When the weed pulling was finished and the bricks were all removed, I glared down at the patio area. I tracked down Aaron and had him look at it. We agreed. The fountain base had to go. It was cracked and chipping and in general disrepair. Sure, we could fix it… But we didn’t want bricks in the backyard, anyway, and we weren’t that fond of the fountain’s style. We liked the upright part, so could we salvage that?

I’m not sure where the blue fescue grass will go now (it was set into the brick patio which was overrun with weeds). I ended up purchasing a third whiskey barrel to go in front of the fountain to catch the water while we figured out what we were going to do with this fountain.

We Need Your Ideas

• Should we completely demo the fountain and repair the fence?
• Should we demo the fountain, repair the fence, pull forward the arbor (which the grape lives on), and put a handmade fountain in there? What should it be made of? Barrels? Pots?
• Should we leave the upright portion of the fountain like it is? What should we do to create the “fountain” part?
• Is it fine like it is? The idea would be to paint that concrete backsplash to match our “living fence” (see upcoming post!) and then have a bunch of plant pots around the catch barrel.
• What do you think we should do?

And what in the world do we do with this area? We have another place to put the bricks and they won’t be visible. We have a lot of limestone-type stuff in the backyard… Should we fill this with limestone hunks and then plant thyme or something similar around it? Hmm…

Just for Fun

I’ll embarrass all of us with this video. Side note: we played World of Warcraft for a long time and we think Belt Leather Belt is the height of funny.