tin cans and other such stuff

my friend Marion is a potter [her garden is gorgeous - I must show you one day.. full of interesting bits.. she could be called 'Queen of the make-do'.. most of her garden is created from stuff she finds on council clean-ups'..] A few years ago, Marion created some clay garden stake toppers that she had seen in a gardening magazine. she is very talented and made a batch of mixed colours: plain clay with various glazed colours of Verdi blue, Tuscan yellow and eau-de-nil green... and she gave me a few for my garden..

I had vague memories of my grandfather using old tin cans in his garden on top of his stakes and I started to collect empty tin cans.. and so began my collection of rusty tins on top of stakes.. much to the amusement of my friends..especially when I begged, borrowed or stole their tin cans from the rubbish heap
then i got very creative and used old cups that had lost their handles..
oneday an old man was walking past Inglewood, he glanced over the fence, pointed at my various array of stake toppers & commented .. "did you know that they were actually used to stop people from poking their eyes out while gardening?" .. I told him that I had been thinking they were more of a decorative thing or even maybe snail traps as snails seem to love congregating inside..... but of course his theory made sense !! ~ ...

I should have listened closer to the wisdom of the ages because today, while weeding around my garden, I bent near a stake and it stabbed me just beside my eye, up my cheek and across the eyebrow.. and now I have tiny little splinters all over the left side of my face.. making for a very nice look..