Hey!  Look at some of the magic I helped make today! 

My heart broke last year when those big branches fell off the crape myrtle, but I saved them because they looked like antlers, and I knew there was something fun to make from them.

I was fiddling with them for awhile, trying to put them into a teepee shape for beans, and then I saw how the two pieces wanted to support one another like hands with fingers intertwined so I imagined a fairy arch in the garden for Eloise.

The structure is quite stable.  The two halves held each other up on their own, but I added some bamboo crutches around the base of each half and then the rocks.  A child can’t hang off of it, but it can be bumped squarely by an old woman (me) and not fall over.

I love when magic happens so easily! 

We’ll plant purple and yellow pole beans around the base of each part of the arch and hope they’ll grow happily over the whole structure.  I looked for scarlet runner beans at a couple of nurseries today and came up empty.  Hopefully these other beans will work well.

Eloise loved the gate and took to decorating it right away with rosemary, sage, and straw.  I had a couple of moments of feeling like a good mom.