Review: Yard Art and Handmade Places
Aug. 1st, 2009 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI read a review of Jill Nokes' Yard Art and Handmade Places: Extraordinary Expressions of Home in a Statesman that was lying around at Trudy's.
I thought there would be a lot of cool pictures of people's interesting and beautiful yards that they had fixed up. But I don't actually like the look of most of the places.
Another thing I looked forward to was that because all the yards were in my state, I might actually be able to grow some of the same plants. This book is not really about plants, though.
But the review had gushed about the writing as much as the pictures, so I read.
Each chapter was about a different yard and the story behind the yard. Some of the stories were indeed interesting. Some were just basically that the person got into collecting things that were so big they wouldn't fit into the house, so they had to display them in the yard.
My favorite collection was the palm tree collection at Mango's Jungle. The collectors bought a huge place in the middle of nowhere that had the kind of soil and weather they wanted to grow palms. Then they added seating and walkways to wind through the plants. They used dead palm fronds to thatch outdoor buildings (palapas). They added other plants and parrots.
The story that most tickled me was about the yard with the ferris wheel. "I've had some of the hardest businessmen out here, you know, because we work with oil fields, cattle, mining, and so when they come out for dinner or for business, we always get them out here for a ride. And I'll ride with them or Tim will take them round, and pretty soon these old guys soften up they start saying things like, 'Well, I remember back when I was with my dad, and he took me on my first Ferris wheel ride.' You can't quite get ahold of what it is, but something changes and they're better when they leave."
The most extreme story is about the guy who took a detour on his trip from Mississippi where he lived to California where his sister offered to get him a job. He stopped on the way in Houston to visit a friend and discovered the joys of living in a place where alcohol is legal. "In Mississippi, you had to go eleven miles to get anything to drink. When I got out to Texas, why, you got a liquor store here, a church there, liquor store there, church here. I said, 'Woo! I'm in heaven!'" He stayed and eventually became an alcoholic. Then one day he awoke in a hospital where a) a nurse told him that if he started drinking again he'd be back and b) he got a vision of bringing found objects together to make a "big pretty thing." He went with that vision.
I kind of like the bottle and clay building construction. And the yard decorated with cement towers and concrete flowers. And the one full of birdhouses. And I do kind of admire the guy who has his own sphinx and his own statue of liberty.
I didn't get any new ideas for my own yard out of this book. But if I ever want to get inspired to do something at all wacky, this would be a good book to re-read.
I thought there would be a lot of cool pictures of people's interesting and beautiful yards that they had fixed up. But I don't actually like the look of most of the places.
Another thing I looked forward to was that because all the yards were in my state, I might actually be able to grow some of the same plants. This book is not really about plants, though.
But the review had gushed about the writing as much as the pictures, so I read.
Each chapter was about a different yard and the story behind the yard. Some of the stories were indeed interesting. Some were just basically that the person got into collecting things that were so big they wouldn't fit into the house, so they had to display them in the yard.
My favorite collection was the palm tree collection at Mango's Jungle. The collectors bought a huge place in the middle of nowhere that had the kind of soil and weather they wanted to grow palms. Then they added seating and walkways to wind through the plants. They used dead palm fronds to thatch outdoor buildings (palapas). They added other plants and parrots.
The story that most tickled me was about the yard with the ferris wheel. "I've had some of the hardest businessmen out here, you know, because we work with oil fields, cattle, mining, and so when they come out for dinner or for business, we always get them out here for a ride. And I'll ride with them or Tim will take them round, and pretty soon these old guys soften up they start saying things like, 'Well, I remember back when I was with my dad, and he took me on my first Ferris wheel ride.' You can't quite get ahold of what it is, but something changes and they're better when they leave."
The most extreme story is about the guy who took a detour on his trip from Mississippi where he lived to California where his sister offered to get him a job. He stopped on the way in Houston to visit a friend and discovered the joys of living in a place where alcohol is legal. "In Mississippi, you had to go eleven miles to get anything to drink. When I got out to Texas, why, you got a liquor store here, a church there, liquor store there, church here. I said, 'Woo! I'm in heaven!'" He stayed and eventually became an alcoholic. Then one day he awoke in a hospital where a) a nurse told him that if he started drinking again he'd be back and b) he got a vision of bringing found objects together to make a "big pretty thing." He went with that vision.
I kind of like the bottle and clay building construction. And the yard decorated with cement towers and concrete flowers. And the one full of birdhouses. And I do kind of admire the guy who has his own sphinx and his own statue of liberty.
I didn't get any new ideas for my own yard out of this book. But if I ever want to get inspired to do something at all wacky, this would be a good book to re-read.
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Yard Art book
on 2009-08-04 02:21 am (UTC)Re: Yard Art book
on 2009-08-13 03:24 am (UTC)Re: Yard Art book
on 2009-08-13 04:42 am (UTC)