An outdoor garden shower- it could be yours on Oct 25!

Yesterday, our garden coaching business, Butterfly Properties competed in my favorite Missoula event- Home ReSource's Spontaneous Construction (aka SponCon).  In this event, contestants have 7 hours to build whatever they want from materials found at home resource.  Affectionately known as a festival of creative reinvention, SponCon brings out incredibly creative and talented artists, builders and craftsmen. This is a really unique and inspiring event, and I look forward to it all year.

However, today I feel like I got run over by a truck!  It is exhausting- the planning (though it is spontaneous), loading up all of your shop (and then unloading it at the end of the day!), the 7 straight hours of foot-on-the-gas building and problem solving is really exhausting; and I can't wait to do it all again next year!

This year, in keeping with our theme of building things for the garden, we built an outdoor shower. At
Butterfly Properties Garden Coaching, we encourage clients to embrace outdoor space as both an extension of your home and a refuge from life’s demands. Bathing outside gives a sense of freedom, a way to connect with the outdoors, and is also practical. Our Garden Shower creates a charming sanctuary for you, and a practical spot to hose down the kids and dogs.

Team photo:  (from left) Larissa Cummings, Marilyn Marler, David Schmetterling, Brittany Cummings, and Barry Cummings

The other theme we have been following is repurposing garden tools into things for the garden (seems appropriate).

In 2011 we built a mobile garden cloche (this is still my favorite project of ours)

In 2012 we built a table and chairs from garden tools

This year the garden shower.

 It is a finalist in the competition, so that means it will be auctioned off at the Benefit Auction on October 25- so it could be yours!

The shower features insects made from garden tools that each have a function (I call them shovel bugs).

The lady bug's leg is a shower valve

The shield bugs feet are towel and clothes hooks

And the butterfly (we had to have a butterfly) is the door pull

Also, the water from a garden hose is all plumbed

and emerges through a watering can

that is perched on a snag (we got that from a slash pile).

It is a lot of fun to see talented builders and architects from around western Montana at this event, including Mast and Co., DePuy Building and Adapt Design and Build, each of which donates a lot of their time to Home ReSource.

Also I look forward to this event to see my friend Barry, it is about the only time we see each other anymore (he used to live in Missoula but moved to Idaho).  The funny thing is we spend all day together, working a few feet from one another, and don't say a word to each other!  Maybe its the ear plugs.