I've always derived satisfaction from re-purposing items which have outlived their original purpose, but during a couple recent garden art projects, it occurred to me that even more satisfying than re-purposing, is turning something negative into something positive. In all areas of life, opportunities for transforming a bad event into something good, sometimes present themselves, but this post is specifically about garden art.

We endured a never ending boundary dispute with "neighbors" that dragged on for years, and during a moment of blind fury I bought a couple aluminum "no trespassing" signs at a hardware store with the intent of posting them on our border fence when the trial reached a conclusion. However when the case was finally resolved, we were filled with euphoric relief, and we chose to get on with our lives. Ironically said "neighbors" posted "no trespassing" signs of their own, while ours lay half forgotten on the work bench in the cellar.

Time passed and I decided to create a double-sided reversible decorative sign to dress up a tree in our small woods and add some words of inspiration to look at on our walks there. (The slogans were not original, exactly. One was taken from a reforesting group's literature and the other was a take-off on a frequently-spoken line from Star Trek.) I planned to buy some sheet aluminum to make the sign when I remembered the "no trespassing" signs on the work bench. I retrieved them and cut a circle out of each sign, and used the punch method and some artist paints to create the design on the blank side of each circle. Then I connected the two signs back to back with the "no trespassing" lettering sandwiched between the two circles and hidden from sight, and created a bit of art for our woods. So the end result was that the "neighbors" in question have ugly signs with a nasty message to look at, while deep in our woods, away from their sight, we have art with an uplifting message(s).

The little "deer crossing" signs (above) were just a whimsical touch that we wired to our fence next to gaps that we deliberately left open in two places where the deer enter and exit our land. They also were cut from the same signs as the circular sign.

(The gnome and fox family below were in "the shop" for a paint touch-up while I was painting the sign.)

A few years later we discovered that our pine trees have been stricken with blister rust, a fatal tree disease. For awhile the messages on the sign depressed me in light of the impending death of the pines, but then I began to notice all the hardwood saplings that are now rising up to take over after the inevitable demise of the pines. The ideas of renewal and transition changed the messages on the sign for me. I now think of the "doorway to a new world" between the pines as being the doorway to a new forest that will grow tall and prosper as the pines once did. So, again, a negative became a positive.

This past summer I decided to create some decorative metal bird clips to attach to a post in the garden. I took some inspiration from a lady on this or another junk gardening forum from a long time ago. She had created birds out of empty soda pop cans, fitting together the design on the cans to suggest colors and feathers rather than paint. For myself I used scraps left over from the "no trespassing" signs to create two red-winged blackbirds. I kept the orange and black lettering of the sign for the back of the birds and painted the fronts of them. Then I screwed them to large wooden clothespins, and voila!

I'd be interested in hearing if anyone else here has done a similar project that created a positive new life out of something negative.