06/06/2025
The Demise of Last Year’s Sand Sculpture
This evening as I was taking Lady Marmalade and Cleo for I walk I noticed that the sand sculpture I built to celebrate Ecoburbia’s Open Garden has collapsed. To be honest this is neither surprising nor distressing. If anything, it’s amazing that it’s lasted this long. In fact it won’t be all that long until I would have had to bowl it over anyway to start on the new sand sculpture for this year’s Open Garden Day. I wonder what I’m going to build?
Last year’s sculpture was a sort of portrait of all the garden folk that live here. I had Shani and Richell, who are the ones who do most of the actual work, and kind of guest appearances by Lady Marmalade, one of her babies, Isa the chicken (Yes all our chickens are called Isa) and even Miss Piggy got a spot. Piggy doesn’t really contribute to the garden but she definitely provides company and character.
The main difficulty I had with carving the sculpture was Shani’s nose. It’s one of her most defining features so I wanted to make it obvious that it was her without making her nose so prominent that she got upset. Have a look at the phots. Did I pick the right balance point?
The other are of uncertainty was suspending the information banner between the two figures. I actually built it as a sort of bridge and even at the time I wasn’t too sure it would stay up once I took the formwork out. Much to my amazement I has survived best part of eight months!! I guess that has to be considered a successful experiment.
So anyway now that the sculpture has started to collapse I have to start thinking about what I will build next. I guess it has to be something gardenish. Got any suggestions?
