Gardens and Art

We've gotten a community garden space recently, and we decided that it needed to have some art. So, my wife has been taking some ceramics courses in the Art department at the University. One of the grad students created an installation that used something like 200 of these clay houses. Each one is about a foot square, 30 inches tall and weighs a good 25 pounds. The show was several months ago, and the houses were slated to be tossed in the dumpster. Of course, we had to have them. We've had about a dozen sitting in the driveway for quite some time, so it was time to cart them off to the garden:



Pretty easy load for the Xtracycle, and plenty of room left for tools. Much better than the first load, which included two 20-some-odd pound buckets of compost. But really, even that wasn't that bad. As long as the two sides are balanced, it'll really haul a lot. The weather is still too cold for the city to turn on the taps at the garden, but my rain barrels have been full. So I've also hauled several loads of water, to the tune of about 10 gallons per trip. That's about 83 pounds and works fine—even if the buckets slosh a bit, the bike still handles OK.

Here's a shot of the houses arriving to find their fellows already in place:



Factory and bike path in the background.

What is it about gardens and art that they go so well together?