Persephone Sees the Light of Day

After more than a year of living in the Underworld of our basement, and well past the Vernal Equinox, Persephone finally made it into our garden.




I told you about “Persephone,” the large concrete yard statue we bought in Rosebud, Missouri, a while back. We’ve been really slow in preparing her for exposure to the elements.

First, we had a bit of plastic surgery to do—grinding and sanding off the seams from where the two halves of her mold had fit imperfectly together, and adding a bit of concrete-patch to places where she wasn’t quite smooth enough. Then sanding again. Then patching again. (It’s Hades being a perfectionist!)

Then, it took us forever to decide on which shade of “whitish gray” looked enough like marble. Then, lordy, we had to paint it, making sure to work paint into all the little irregularities in the surface. Then paint it again. We don’t want her peeling!

So you get the picture.




We actually got her done before last fall, but we didn’t see any reason to stick her outside before the winter. She’s Persephone, after all.

But then her delivery to the Earth’s surface this spring was delayed by my broken ankle and her tremendous weight. We could put her on a two-wheeler dolly and pull her around, but there’s no way we could lift her, and pulling her up the hump of the driveway seemed iffy for me in a “moon boot.”

So last Friday, my dad was over, and my ankle was feeling pretty good, so we wrapped her up in a blanket, cushioned the hand-cart with cardboard, and wheeled her around the house on the sidewalk and up the hump of the driveway.

And now she graces our backyard with her goddesslike opulence. I’m glad we have a nice big privacy fence, and she’s not visible from the street. We think she’s close enough to a “real” statue that she adds an air of classic beauty to our backyard, like it’s a courtyard at a castle or something.

Or maybe she’s just a tacky concrete yard statue with a paint job.




But we certainly didn’t get her in order to make our yard look “normal.” So whatever anyone else thinks isn’t of great concern to us. We like her a lot!