Hayden gets her roof-top garden

Alexis takes Hayden up on the roof for a surprise.

Watch it... ready? Don't trip over the fire pit...

The garden is a long overdue project that finally got tackled as part of Iron Craft challenge #5 (they're every two weeks, not monthly! ack!), for which the theme was "green," in the sense of either the color or re-use/recycle. The patio is both green for plants and green for re-use, as everything except one piece was something I already had.

Shall we let Hayden uncover her eyes and see what's what?

Just the place for breakfast on sunny mornings. 

The design on the top of the dining table is a motif from a favorite skirt that fell apart a couple years ago, Mod-Podged to a dollar-store thingie meant to protect walls from errant door knobs, then detailed in gold.

The seats -- which somehow ended up at bar stool height -- are Easter eggs. After I applied the first coat of Krylon Fusion khaki, I left them drying in the yard so I could do grocery shopping. When I got back, a wind storm had sprung up and scattered them hither and yon. So when I took them out to put on a second coat that evening, of course the eggs weren't properly clean and the paint alligatored. Since the alligatoring looked like cracks in the egg shell, I decided to highlight it in gold as part of the design.

Here's the spot for lounging.

The big lounge seat is a basket I used to use for storage, flipped over, with a new cushion. It's the only piece that was completed before Saturday, March 14. Otherwise, the whole project was done in a weekend.

The low table is a dollar-store coaster on top of a napkin ring. All of those little flat planters with vines coming out of one side are pencil sharpeners sold at Dollar Tree in packs of twelve. The urns in the next photo are also from a Dollar Tree multi-pack.

Every yard needs a little privacy.

To fill the photo-frame screen (a $2 curio shop find, now decorated with transparent leaves from a Target $1 bin a couple years ago), I dug into the postcard supply and chose three favorite Arizona-related scenes. The top photo is Shady Dell, home of restored vintage travel trailers, where I stayed in a 1959 Boles Aero a few years ago.

The middle picture is a section of The Last Campaign by Philip C. Curtis, one of Arizona's great crackpot artists. It's one of my three favorite pieces at the Phoenix Art Museum. The bottom image is most of Zoroaster Temple at Sunset by Thomas Moran, who's classified as a Hudson River School painter but clearly kept heading west until he hit the Grand Canyon. I celebrated going consciously carless a couple years ago by taking a van tour up to the Grand Canyon, which involved taking roughly 240 photos of colorful rocks. . . but Moran's version is better than any of mine.

Hot glue strings. There are always hot glue strings. Meh.

The letters hide holes in the gold blocks: these are more of the desk-toy blocks used for lamp bases in the Glam Goth Condo. The letters are left over from the set used to make the Moose Lodge sign in the Moose Lodge, and the initials used are K, H, D, A, and Z, for the four Liv gals Katie, Hayden, Daniela, and Alexis, plus Zora the landscape architect.

Polly will have a cracker RIGHT NOW.

The bird statue is the one and only thing bought specifically for this project, as when I saw these at the 99 Cents Only near the Maryvale Ball Park, I could not resist. I bought one with a nice blue-green patina-copper coloration, thinking that was going to be the garden color scheme. . . and then I got a can of black spray paint in my hand.

I see basically anything. . . paint it black.

By mid-morning on Sunday, the project had mutated into Spray Paint All The Things. Nutella lids, pencil sharpeners, extra plastic cups bought to make Katie and Hayden's kitchen sink. . . nothing is safe! The can was almost full when I started, and I didn't stop until it was empty.

The pervasive gold trim happened because ApartmentTherapy swears that gold is the must-have garden accent color for 2015. It's clearly early in the garden's development, as the plants are small and a little sparse, but I was determined not to buy more. I had two 1-gallon Ziplock bags of floral bits after hacking my stems into manageable pieces during the winter, and I completely emptied one of them. The other is all orange flowers that look very autumnal.

Katie really needs to hurry and bring up drinks!

Here, Hayden hosts her St. Patrick's Day party with cousin Hallie (in gold jacket), landscape architect Zora, Alexis, Daniela (who could use a wig), and her very young cousin Thorne (playing with Fitzroy the dog). My younger sister will recognize the fire pit as a candle she gave me for Christmas -- the shape went perfectly with the eggshell stools, and now the gals can have a real fire in their pit.