Music Making

Steve and I have had this random branch that came off one of our trees under the house for a while now. We kept it because it was almost perfectly straight, and quite long. Surely it would have some future purpose in our garden, we rationalized. I don't know what happened really, but for some reason a few weeks ago now, in the afternoon, I was suddenly taken with the notion to use that long straightish branch.

I'd seen a bunch of music wall things on the internet and had been tossing the idea of making my own around in my head for a while. Where to put it and what would go on it were always the biggest stumbling blocks. Anyway, I ended up just taking hold of that long piece of wood and drilling some holes into it. I used some wire we had (I don't quite remember why we got it) to loop it up to the fence and then proceeded to raid all of the spare bits we had lying around near Steve's manly tool chest of manly tools.

It was really cool to see I could actually get things that would make noise out of stuff we had lying around. A lot of it came from our old bathroom that we reno-ed when we bought the house nearly five years ago now! Talk about saving things for the right moment. My favourite things are the old tap handles that actually ring when you spin them. So lovely.

The seed pods were from down the street - I think we had cracked them open that afternoon. I'm not sure how long they will last, but they are provided good contrast in sound and visuals at the moment. The next day I added the jingle bells onto things (that were a hand-me-on from my friend Melissa who went to Canada).

It was really a work in progress, because I didn't add the plastic Ikea knives until a few days after that too. I found them in a drawer and realised we'd never used them. The music wall needed some colour so on they went.

The kids like to play on it, but I'm thinking I need to add some tins down the bottom that they can bang on to really get some noise out of. There is another branch that has kind of come off a tree down the street that I've got my eye on. I went down on Sunday arvo to try to pull it off, but it's still hanging on by a thread.

I realise now that none of these photos really show you where this is in the backyard or in relation to the play wall or the sandpit. Sorry. It is up the back and I am planning on revamping the garden bed up there to make it into a fairy garden and add some stepping stones for the kids to sit on, so maybe if that comes to fruition, I'll take more photos and it will make more sense.

In any case, it's in the back corner, under the shade of a big tree and a tall fence. Win.