Today’s post comes to us from Aboksu.
In 2018 I retired after 39 years of life in Taiwan. I moved to Holland, MI, and bought a hundred year old house in the city.
The town was platted out sometime in the 1960s, and included alleys in the middle of blocks. One by one, the city “vacated” many of those alleys, but some remain. Near our house there’s one that a community association “neatened up” within the last 10 years. It’s an “art alley”. One back yard installation included a few racks of colored bottles on poles. They attracted me. I figured I could do that, myself, in my own yard.
After examining the installation, I decided that I could do it cheaper too. I sent out a request for empty bottles on a neighborhood bulletin board, and got “not few” responses, sometimes linked to statements that “we didn’t drink all that wine” or “the bottles accumulated over a long time.” (That’s Holland, MI piety speaking). My own installation, because I did it on the cheap side, blew apart in the wind more than once. Lots of bottles and red vases smashed before I finally figured out how to make it secure.

As I live and drink, I accumulate bottles regularly. Three windows in the garage were “bottled up” in 2022. More racks and installations have taken places in the yard. As I write, there are 50 bottles and vases, drilled and washed, waiting in the basement for another inspiration to strike.

Tell me about your last inspiration!