A few weeks ago, I answered an ad on Craigslist for someone who had cut down a cherry tree and had a bunch of the wood laying around. I asked them if they had any of the branches left, and they did. When I went to pick it up, they also had branches from a curling willow they had chopped down. I had wanted to use the cherrywood for the fence trellis, but the curling willow just looked so cool.

The other day I decided it was perfect for some freestyle pea supports. You don’t need a lot to make this happen—just some gloves to protect your hands, something to cut the branches with (loppers and pruners), gardening wire and snips to cut it, and the branches.

The idea is to fashion little teepees in each container, and then secure places where they overlap with the gardening wire. I like to snip mine pretty close to the joint to prevent anyone getting scratched, but you may want to leave yours longer if you want to reuse the wire later.

With the peas, I had let them overgrow too long, and so I had to lift and pull them back into place, separating some of the tendrils in the process. There were also some casualties, as the pea plants snap rather easily, which is also why I should have done this earlier.

The end result makes a nice conversation piece and supports your plants!

In other news, I also had the back step fixed, and I took it out of the concrete molds myself this morning. The original step was this broken down, narrow brick thing which was an accident waiting to happen until it actually did. A busted knee, ankle and hand later, I decided it had to go sooner rather than later. Here is the original brick step

and here is the new step, which is made from concrete that I exposed the aggregate on.

It was actually a lot easier than I thought, and it was done without any of that special chemical used to keep the top from setting … basically just a brush and a bit of water, watched carefully over a day or so. The exposed aggregate basically matches the concrete used on the rest of the patio, and will be the same treatment the side of the house will be getting when the new step is poured to replace out the rotten deck we removed. I used a larger brush on the overall surface, and (funny enough) a little nail brush on the top part to get under the sill. I redid the treatment 3-4 times over the course of a day and a half, after waiting for the initial set period, until it was a look I liked. On the last time, I also brushed the sides (once the frame was removed) and scrubbed some of the extra off the bottom. I still need to clean it up a bit more, but I really like it! I think the trick is to not use a heavy hand on it—you can always go back and do more, but you can’t replace that which you have scrubbed too hard on! So I poured a bit of water on it and lightly brushed the surface until I was happy with what I had.