Artificial dry stone wall.

Following an enquiry for the top section of a dry stone wall I was all of a quarry, sorry, quandary.   The obvious method is to build a small section with real stone and mould from that.   I usually use latex to mould with as it is very economical.   The thing is, latex takes a while to dry and several layers must be built up to get the required thickness.   The Cassini's plaster I use to make the finished article also takes up to a week to cure fully.   With a vacation looming I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.   Pun number two.

I decided to get the mould prepared by a mould maker.   Transporting a dry stone wall in real stone posed a bit of a problem.   You can't easily lift a complete dry stone wall, not even the top section.   I could have built the wall on a pallet but had this been handled roughly, my short section of wall may have crumbled.

I decided, therefore, to make a section of wall from scratch.   Using a box section as a base I used plaster to make the basic shape of the dry stone wall and then added cracks, notches and general rocky features by hand.   Here is the result:

Artificial dry stone wall

I haven't painted it as yet as it's still wet but I have converted the image above to greyscale, added some colour, added more of the lower wall and dropped the wall in to a farmer's field.   Digitally as opposed to literally, that is!  Aye, that'll do.

Artificial dry stone wall.   Digitally enhanced image.


artificialrocks.co.uk

Keith And The Giant Pepper.

If you know any lachanophobics or melonphobics (it's a real term) and want to give them some aversion therapy, consider purchasing some outsized fruits or vegetables.   The apples range from 150mm to 800mm, strawberries come in two sizes: 290mm and 520mm whereas peppers are 360mm and 450mm.

Pretty pastel polyethylene pots

An appropriate alliteration if ever I saw one.  Alliteration occurs when a series of words in a row (or close to a row) have the same first consonant sound.   You pick these things up or rediscover them when your children are taught them at school.   I don't think I was taught alliteration in English when I was at school.   We did 'Modern English' and grammer didn't appear to be included.   Speaking of series, here are a series of images of pretty pastel polyethylene pots.  All are lightweight and suitable for indoor and outdoor use.

www.largeflowerpots.co.uk 

New Addington Rocks!

£7000 has been spent installing some 20 odd boulders in a New Addington street to prevent illegal parking.   Adverse comments from many locals makes one wonder whether a full consultation exercise had taken place.   The local authority could have hired 20 rocks for a few weeks from us and could then have decided whether the real rocks were the best solution.     They would have needed to be removed at night in case they were 'borrowed'.   We wouldn't have enjoyed a remake of "The Invasion Of The Boulder Snatchers"

 www.artificialrocks.co.uk

Rocks in Central Parade, New Addington.

Lightweight artificial rocks.

Perhaps some giant flower pots would have been more acceptable: www.largeflowerpots.co.uk

Lovely curves

Take a look at the beautiful curvy bodies on these babies...   a lovely organic shape reminiscent of large ceramic urns but made of lightweight and durable polyethylene in a range of colours.   You can even have illuminated versions!  400mm dia, 600mm dia, 800mm dia and 100mm dia.

How to fool a wisteria into flowering again.

The Wisteria blooms had faded and the new shoots were going crazy so I performed the usual trimming and tidying.   I had a few artificial blooms left over from when I set up my fake rockery (mockery?) on the artificialrocks.co.uk site, and I thought I would use them to fool people into thinking that the wisteria had bloomed again and indeed was going to bloom all summer.  And winter.   Now unless someone else is actually fooling me, the wisteria has gone and produced a late flower.

Real wisteria flower and fake wisteria flower.

I have a couple of theories about this.   One theory is that new wisteria shoots have eyes and when the shoot sees another flower, it automatically starts to flower itself.   Another theory is that it just happens every now and then after a good spring pruning.   Shoot happens.

Just a plastic flower pot...

Did you say large?

They may be thought of as 'just plastic flower pots' but the tough and durable rotationally moulded polyethylene pots take not an inconsiderable effort to produce.   Take a look at them being made here:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQXNaS3BW1U

www.largeflowerpots.co.uk