At the back of our yard is a bamboo forest. Inside it are piles of brush, a broken metal fence that separates my lot from the neighbors,’ and whatever miscellaneous trash that’s found its way over the line. Kids love to play in it, and the bamboo does a great job of hiding the seemingly abandoned house behind ours.
As with all good things, there’s a downside. It’s incredibly invasive, as I’m sure you know.
This spring it’s infiltrating our yard and my new flowerbed. It’s asparagus-like shoots resist the chop of the weed-eater and seem undeterred by being routinely run over with the riding lawn mower.
Luckily I have a boy with a pocket knife. When he started cutting down the new shoots and slicing them apart, I couldn’t believe all the colors, patterns, and textures that were hiding inside.
I love a careful arrangement of objects, such as these photos of found ocean trash, organized by color, or Emily Blincoe’s various arrangements. There’s something so pleasing about them, I decided to make my own with all the bamboo parts Coban carved up.
Because at this point in the pandemic, I just want to look at something beautiful and forget for a while about everything that’s going on around me.
