I was talking to a friend who brought up something that has shown up in some of the photos of our yard that I’ve shared.

The tires.

So, I figured I would explain, because there are so many of them!

Tree tire is tired and broken.

This is from one of the pictures I posted yesterday.  The pair of trees on either side of the sidewalk at the gate are in tires like this, as is the tree by the kitchen window, and others I’ve been finding, buried under leaves, in unexpected places.

At some point, many years ago, it became a popular thing to re-purpose old tires in yards.  With trees, the saplings were planted inside the tire, and the tire served to protect the planting from damage.  Like getting accidentally hit by a lawn mower, or backed into by a car or something.  As time went by, of course, there was no way to remove the tire once the tree grew.  In this case, the trunk outgrew the tire itself, which was old enough to split under the pressure of the growing tree.

Which gives you an idea of how many years this has been there!

As you can see, an attempt was made to pretty up the tire by painting it.

Then there are the tractor tires.

I find myself perplexed as I see something like this.  Obviously, someone cared enough to create and protect a little flower garden at Mary’s feet, and even paint the tractor tire to pretty it up.  But they didn’t care enough to remove the tree that started growing at it which, if it were left to continue growing, will eventually push aside the tire and destroy the garden inside it.  I can understand the leaves in the garden still being there; there was no one here to tend to such things while the place was empty, but you’d think someone would have removed the tree, long before it got this big!

The garden gnome is now back where it was found.  This was also a flower garden planted under the bird bath, though there is nothing but grass and weeds inside it now.

Slowly but surely, we are working our way around the yard and cleaning this stuff up.  It will be nice to clean out the bird bath and start using it for its intended purpose again.

Then there are these contraptions.

This is a car tire that was cut in half, decoratively, then flipped inside out.  The other half, without the decorative edge, was left right side out and is underneath.

It cannot have been easy to cut the tire, never mind flipping it inside out!

I’m more at a loss over what it planted inside it.  They appear to be little trees or bushes.  Perhaps they are self seeded?

This second one has even more of them.  There is nothing to show that anything else was ever planted in there.  If these were deliberately planted, why were they planted off to the sides like that, where the soil is shallowest, instead of in the middle?

I have questions.  Many questions.

This planter is in a particularly bad location.  It’s right up against the platform for the clothes line, which is on a pulley system.  There used to be three lines, but now there is just one.  The clothes can be hung on the line from the platform, moving the line on the pulleys from one spot, rather than having to walk along the line and reaching high up to hang things.  This allows the line itself to be much higher, too, and less in the way.  I tried hanging the king size mattress protector on the line from the platform and quickly discovered that the bushes planted in the tire planter are right under the line, and taller than the hand rail, which means anything hung on the line gets dragged through the bushes.

The planter and its contents is going to have to go.  We don’t plan to use the clothes line often, but we do want to have the option!

While walking around and taking these photos, I found something very amusing.  Remember this, from winter?

This is a path the cats made through the snow, from whatever shed they’ve been using out back.  There is also a small hole under the fence between the pump shack and the other house, near where there used to be a gate, many years ago.  It had been buried by the snow, so the cats made this new path to the gate to get into the yard.

Cat paths in the snow are an easy thing to understand.

Then there’s this.

A cat path worn into the grass is a whole different thing! :-D  You can see Butterscotch, sitting at the hole in the fence.

Many, many cat feet have created this path. :-D

The Re-Farmer