If you happen to have a marine cage light in the garage, and some lengths of chain in your garden shed, all of which came to light after a thorough cleaning and organizing marathon today, you can take a short break from all that tedium to make this. Marty wrapped some twine around the rim of the cage and hooked the chain under the twine. Done in about 15 minutes. Some pliers to open and close links on the chain were the only tool required.
Lots of these caged lights have colored shades, so we were in luck that this shade is clear glass.
Cleaning out the garage is always equal parts delight and exasperation with all the stuff we’ve rat-holed away over the years.
Actually using some of the forgotten stuff we’ve stored feels like vindication, a kind of triumph. Triumph of the Pack Rats.
Eryngium pandanifolium, almost to the top of the pergola, is just behind the vase, which is filled with a single bloom of Gaillardia ‘Oranges & Lemons.’ I pulled out some annual coreopsis and tucked in a couple of this gaillardia, which like my dryish summer garden just fine and will bloom with astonishing exuberance into fall. That’s also a bromeliad hanging in the background, Aechmea recurvata ‘Aztec Gold’. This is definitely the summer of the hanging garden.
The vase is hanging outdoors for now, from a hook on the pergola, but there’s no reason it couldn’t hang indoors too.
Love this! Great repurposing job! they’d be great with the colored shades for tea lights too.
You are doing better than I! I am trying to clear out the garage – instead of throwing it all out, you have made good use of a well designed object!!
@Deanne, I wish I had about six more of them. I need to hit the salvage yards again!
@Jayne, I wish I could say all of it is getting reused, but most of it will be. And what we don’t keep, the neighbors will take.