If you squint you'll think it's a silk purse.

You can always wrap Cow Coffin with cheap clothesline. Start at the bottom and go round and round, glueing as you go.

Weathered clothsline trumps styrofoam anytime.

Hey! That's a neat idea.

My favorite Japanese restaurant has many rope wrapped surfaces and I have always thought they were so pretty.

<snork>

It DOES look like a cow coffin! If I were to wrap it up, would I seal it with something? (Grasshopper would most likely attempt to unwrap it a time or two.)

Ahem, there are two types of bamboo, running and clumping. Most common at, er, common nurseries and shops, is the running gold bamboo.

Clumping is quite well behaved. I've friends who've contained running bamboo in steel to a depth of (trying to remember, 18" is more than enough, I think, but double check.)

Don't know about fiberglass as a container, but you wouldn't have to worry so much if you picked up a clumping bamboo... given adequate drainage. On the other hand, you can just plant that in the ground..

My alltime fave bamboo nursery was called Endangered Species, in Tustin, California. The catalog was priceless, to start with. Have not checked to see it if is still kicking...

Woman named Hermine ran it, or at least wrote the catalog and answered the phone and directed traffic. Nobody could match Hermine. I never met her - though I talked with her several times at length - but my business partner knew and appreciated her in all her fulsome presence.

My thought is more towards... why not do a water garden...

Yeh, I know, steel rots. But I gather that fear of running bamboo is both correct and dealable with, if maintained. Have a Bamboo Society friend. Was never all that interested myself, re the running, and collecting various types, but you will get more knowledgeable answers if you check out your local bamboo society.

Hmmm...

The cow coffin is actually maybe just sized for two goats and a few lambs.

It measures 20 inches high.

Perhaps bamboo is not the best choice because once I allow for drainage I might not have an appropriate depth.

I was going to put the planter on my patio so I don't think roots coming out and digging in will be a big problem.

I would like to plant something that could serve as a screen without being too "screenish". I don't know much about bamboo varieties but I like that fat, straight kind best as opposed to the bushy kind.

I like that whispery, ticky sound bamboo makes. Is there something else that would give me a similar effect? In the finished scheme of things it would be sitting right outside my bedroom window so I want something that sounds nice but doesn't have a big smell.

Ohhh. A water garden! That would make a pretty sound.

I would probably have to bring someone in to do that kind of thing for me.

Still, my neighbor does still owe me $500 and he does do gardening and he did build himself a nice little waterfall.....

Ohh!

I dunno, I've only had the golden bamboo, running type, phylostachys aurea, or something like that, where it dropped leaves on my porch all the time, while I poured gallons from my spaghetti pot on to it...

On the other hand, I've a friend with two story high controlled bamboo (same friend who makes her own ketchup and can cater elegant weddings and do the decor as well, or a meal for forty of non takeout type indian food. When she's not weaving. Not to tease, I admire her a lot. She is the one who did the steel contraption to contain bamboo, for fun..

However, for us mortals, I'd go with a recirculating fountain or bubbler.
The big sounds from bamboo are primarily from timber bamboo, I'm guessing..

Timber bamboo - I guess that is what I'm thinking of.

I've been kind of on a bamboo kick lately as I might be getting bamboo floors. Mr. B's company ended up with about 700 square feet of bamboo flooring - a product they don't normally carry and it might end up here.

Environmentally speaking, bamboo is an interesting product.

But I'm thinking some kind of water thing might be really cool.

Is the neighbor who threw it out the gardening neighbor?

If so, maybe it's even intended to be some kinda water thing. (Do you know its original intention, aside from storing most of a cow?)

... Who knew?

Actually, this came from the real gardening neighbors - not the professional gardening neighbor.

The cow coffin has been in their shed since they bought the house 30 years ago.

I love our neighbors. P, the wife, is a beautiful miniture person, a 4.25 foot tall Phillipina whose only gardening tool is a 2 foot machete. I'm serious. She uses her machete for every gardening function and she has a very beautiful garden.

Mo adores her. He thinks she is the be-all, end-all of everything.

She really is an amazing person.

Her husband, B, is the neighborhood grandpa who fixes everybody's everything and knows every neighborhood child by name.

This is a great neighborhood.

It's true. Listen, the friend I have who does some of those societies, did a large and largely unpublished few hundred page thing on ficuses, for interest. Hell, I have some avid friends. Me, I'm a superficial generalist.
Have a landscape architect cartogra personally..

You could buy different colored tiles, break them up and make a mosaic
around the tub. Something like this http://www.mosaicmedleys.com/Pots&VasesAN.html

Afterwards you can plant your water garden in it GARDEN

I swear I at least finished a sentence on that last post.

Oh, well.

Dunno how it worked out re earlier post --

My friend the cartographer is quite a quiet fellow re his interests. He has explored many of the areas of the western US for flora and fauna. His january missives always have drawings...

Now all the neighborhood needs is a J.

The mosaic idea is cool!

So many ideas, what to do, what to do?

I'm rethinking the water garden just because of Mo. I think he would want to play in it all the time and everything would get destroyed.

The water garden might have to wait for a few years.

"Don't-touch" water is a very difficult concept.