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Gary Borders: Cows, flamingos, painted pines -- yard art has a place

pink-flamingos.com

I was heading home through a neighborhood north of ours the other day. And that’s when I saw the painted trees.

All of the trees — about two dozen total — have been whitewashed up to about six-feet high. Pine trees mainly, but a few hardwood trees also sported a new look. On the same street maybe eight houses down, another yard sported white-washed trees.

Painting a pine tree with a brush has to be hard work. The bark isn’t smooth, and there are plenty of cracks and crevices. Whoever tackled these loblollies had plenty of energy. This is serious yard art.

Yard art fascinates me. For years a three-quarters-size plywood cutout cow that my dad made for me 11 years ago. Its feet have rotted off and most of the paint has faded. I keep it for sentimental reasons, since it was one of the last things my dad, a commercial artist and Western painter, did for me before becoming disabled. Someone stole it not long after he gave it to me and then brought it back a few days later. I never did figure that one out.

For a time, I kept a plastic pink flamingo in the back yard, but finally someone stole it, and it never returned. Besides, flamingos have become passé. I have a few concrete statues in the back yard — St. Francis of Assisi and a chicken, but I never got up the nerve to paint a tree.

As in most everything else these days, yard art has become commercialized. You can buy any manner of cutout creature at flea markets and from itinerant vendors camped on the side of the road. I like to believe I was ahead of my time with my dad’s cutout cow.

There are lots of people selling yard art online as well. There are not many people willing to go to the trouble of creating it by painting the bottom of a tree white. 

Remember bottle trees? There are still a few around here and there. The creator would take a dead tree, cut off most of the long limbs but leave stubs sticking up from the trunk. The entire tree was then painted white and different-colored bottles were then stuck on the stubs. It makes for a nice effect, but this is not something easily marketable on the Internet.

Some people are fond of using hubcaps as an exterior-decorator statement, usually wired to a chain-link fence. My only objection to a hub-cap fence is the possibility of being blinded when sun hits it just right as you round a corner.

On the other hand, I have always appreciated the painted-tire decorative border, which is something else rarely seen anymore. Old tires are buried halfway into the ground, usually lining a driveway. The top half of the tires are whitewashed. And the junked toilet with plastic flowers is a nice accessory.

I once asked the county agent if there is any reason besides aesthetics to paint a tree. He said in the old days some folks believed whitewashing a tree, especially a fruit tree, kept bugs from damaging it, but insecticides now do that job. And he doubts it ever really worked anyway.

“Some people will paint anything that doesn’t move,” he observed.

Once you paint a tree you can’t go back. You can change colors, but you can’t scrape the paint off the bark or use solvent. If you do, then you will have a dead tree from which you can hang bottles.

So tree painting is out at least as far as I’m concerned. However, I am looking into purchasing a giant topiary, one of those big statues on which ivy grows. Think of a Chia Pet on steroids. 

Gary Borders has been an East Texas journalist and editor for more than 40 years. He works now as a freelance writer, editor and photographer. You can see his work at garyborders.com. He has written for World Wildlife magazine, Texas Monthly, Texas Observer and Airstream Life.