My Early Birthday Present

I have never been a fan of the wishing well on the back corner of our lawn. It had a purpose - it was hiding the wellhead - but it was poorly made and ugly.

This "Before" picture is from the multiple-listing photos when we bought the house. Also in the picture is the raised vegetable garden that was quite productive last summer (see the 2nd windmill picture for our new, improved planters).

I have long wanted to replace it with a windmill - not the dutch variety but the kind that you might see on a farm. Kristen ordered one for me for my birthday and it arrived this week. It only had a couple of hundred parts so assembly was simple (NOT).

In anticipation of its arrival, I decided to see how difficult it was going to be to remove the wishing well. My first discovery was that it was just sitting on the ground. I started to tilt it forward and discovered that it was going to hang up on the wellhead. I started to pull it back into position and the front half kept moving forward. It literally fell in half. Wishing well removal complete!

We bought some 1' square pavers to create a level foundation for the windmill. We still didn't want to look at the wellhead so I built a housing from lumber that I salvaged from the wishing well.

Here's the final results. It will look even better once the flowers start to grow up around it.

Behind the windmill, you can see our new raised vegetable planters. Instead of one 4x8
planter, we now have two and they are twice as deep. All we need now is dirt.

-JC-