Water meter ring overload!

I thought for sure I had blogged about these before and tried to find the post and just put in a link here, but I couldn't find it. Anyhow, to make a long story short, courtesy of the Portland Water Bureau who went around the neighborhood replacing old water meter rings with new a few years back, I got a stash of these old rings. I've been slowly putting them in my garden as pavers. Of course, 'rings' by definition have holes in the middle, so I've been filling them with various things I've found, either for free or for very little, and using quick set cement to complete 'the look.'

This was one of the first completed, filled with some spotted beach rocks I picked up on San Juan Island when I visited Eliza for the first time after they moved to the island. The tile I bought for cheap at the rebuilding center. This meter ring came painted green (the rest were unpainted):



This one I just finished today, filled with Moroccan tile fragments I got from Shawn and Gretchin (thanks guys!):



Another one I did today, also filled with Moroccan tile fragments from Shawn:



Another early ring, 2 more beach rocks from my visit to San Juan Island and another tile from Rebuilding Center:



These next two were made in 2007 when my nieces were here to visit. They each finished a couple of the rings with glass marbles we found at the thrift shop and imprints:



This one has a hand imprint:



Another early ring with river rocks and a tile:



One with a tile and some rebar remnants I picked up from the side of the road on one of my walks:



This one has tiles from Taiwan. I picked them up at a garbage strewn site up on a hill when I went for a walk. That was probably 20 years ago:



These are a few of the completed rings; each one has its own little story.

What will I do when and if we sell the house? Dig them up and take them with me? These are probably not everyone's cup of tea, so will probably be dumped soon enough...

10th

Peering In

The 10th of the 7x7 panels. (I'm still photographing with my cell phone. The camera lens turned out to be beyond rescue—the camera shop sent it to the manufacturer for repairs, who is returning it to the shop saying basically, haha, this lens is so old that they haven't serviced it in 10 years! So forget it.)

This panel was one of those that I 'poured' several weeks back. I was running out of the little clear film containers that I use to store paint, so I gathered up all the ones that had just a little bit of paint left and poured them on several prepared panels. So here was the original poured result:



And, again, doing whatever comes to mind, I decided to follow the poured lines. I've always loved the images from those electronic microscopes, and this one was inspired by that. The finished result is the first image at the top.