Just in Time for Spring, Junk Tulips

Reaching back into the archives I bring you these nail and ball Allium (ish) flowers from 2023. When nothing else will bloom these continue to provide my garden with color.

I do pull them out of the ground every fall so I don’t have flowers poking out of the snow, but every spring I stick them right back in the dirt and they’ve been blooming ever since.

Since it’s almost spring I’m going back into the junk box and making another junk flower that won’t die.

These old bells will be my starting point for some tulip (ish) flowers. One of the first flowers of spring and one I can’t grow in my own yard because my deer will think it’s their own personal smorgasbord.

I’ve already started with the bell with the hole. My grinder cut out the bell hanger so that I can insert a stem.

The rest of my supplies, include golf balls, E6000 glue, rebar and patio light surrounds.

Those patio light surrounds used to be attached to these string lights which I found on Ebay recently. Just wanted to see if they are still available in the wild. I had my own long enough that they’d gotten very rusty and every gust of wind a bunch of the metal flowery parts would fall off.

Eventually I took all the lights down but I kept the rusty metal pieces. You never know when they’ll come in handy.

You probably don’t have these in your stash but you probably don’t have to have them for this project. The bells give off that tulip shape as is. You might even be able to shape an old tin can lid.

Unless you bought or found the perfect sized rebar you’ll probably need to cut it to a nice stem length. Hopefully you or a close friend or family member has access to a metal cutting grinder.