Couple combines imagination, ingenuity for unique pieces

Published 5:00 pm Thursday, July 23, 2015

Just when you’re headed to check out a bottle tree covered in recycled insulators, you notice a porch post peppered in old keys. A fire pit to the right, surrounded by chairs made from old tractor seats, catches your eye.

“I always have more projects started than I can finish, it seems like,” said Robbie, 74. “I’m always looking for something to do.”

The Dendys, who have been married 54 years, built their home in Houston in 1972. Since then, they have added patios, brick walkways, storage buildings and a craft hut, called the Robin’s Nest, for Robbie.

“We like to do things ourselves,” she said. “We had a little bitty patio and it grew and grew as we extended it. Maybe it will be flat enough for us to get wheelchairs around on when the time comes.”

Sid, who worked in his family’s International Harvester dealership for years, now has a little muffler shop where he spends three days a week. Robbie grew up in her family’s Ben Franklin dollar store.

“That where a lot of those keys you see on the wall came from,” Sid said. “That and just 50 years of collecting old keys. You know how you do. You don’t know what it goes to but you can’t throw it away.”

Robbie comes up with most of the ideas for the interesting pieces in the yard and if it involves welding, Sid’s the man for the job.

“I’d get him to do more, but he finds other things to do, other than my honey-do list,” she said.

“I have to go to work every now and then to get a little rest,” said Sid, 75. “I get to rest about three days a week.”

He’s crafted an odd-looking bird from a shovel that sits amid some lush ferns. A hot pink flamingo he made keeps watch over part of the yard while a little dog, complete with hiked leg, eyes a nearby fire hydrant painted red and blue.

“I love bold colors,” Robbie said. “I go in people’s houses and everything is white and I go, ‘Oohhh.’ I’ve just got to have my color.”

A bottle tree filled with cobalt blue bottles and one red one at the top stands sentinel in one part of the yard.

“That’s my Ole Miss bottle tree,” she said. “I collected all the blue bottles but the red one I had to buy.”

Another bottle tree nearby is made from an old muffler pipe and covered in aqua blue and green electric insulators.

“When we moved here, the GM&O railroad ran behind our house and it was active,” Robbie said. “After it stopped, we started gathering the old insulators. I think it’s kind of pretty.”

A rusted farm auger wrapped in Mardi Gras-type baubles becomes a bead tree. A hodge-podge of random materials Sid has collected is his “gate to nowhere.” Wrought-iron security doors, cut in half with feet added, serve as ends for a wood rack for the fireplace.

And then there’s the pile of glass on the porch of Cascilla, a storage shed they named for the community in Tallahatchie County where they got it.

“When we were building the porch, we kept finding glass – burned glass, some of it gnarled-looking,” she said. “Some of it was welded together with dirt in between the pieces that I can’t get out.

“I have no idea who lived out here or if the house burned, just no idea, but I think the glass is so pretty. I put it in an old concrete mixer we have and added water and detergent and let it tumble and tumble. Some of it I need to work on some more.”

Robbie always has an idea in the hopper.

“I’m busy every day,” she said. “Now, I may be busy doing nothing, but I’m busy doing it. When I go somewhere, I’m always looking to see what others have done. I take pictures sometimes. We used to travel a lot and I’d get ideas from our trips.”

Her next project is to take the fused glass she’s found and imbed it in stepping stones she’ll sink in the ground near Cascilla.

“Oh gosh, do I have other projects in mind after that?” she said. “Absolutely. It’s just a matter of what I want to do next.”