Winds were gusting up to 65 mph here last week. My poor angel fell and suffered a concussion. I set her up against the fence while I create a more stable location for her.
She’s always been a bit top-heavy. I’ve wanted to pour sand into her to ground her but there wasn’t an opening. There is now! So I’ll get her weighted with sand today.
Unfortunately I haven’t yet found the missing piece because the high winds blew ALL the leaves off the oak trees. I rummaged through them but couldn’t find it. It must be there somewhere.
Meanwhile, a strategically-placed soup ladle will prevent her from becoming water-logged.
UPDATE 1/14/2017
We’ve had freezing temps, snow, and rain so repairs were a bit delayed, but I finally finished repairing the angel.
The first step was to decide where I wanted her permanently, because I wanted to take this opportunity to stabilize her. I decided on the back left corner of the labyrinth. I had to move a large stainless steel compost bin currently sitting on that spot, and sift the contents. That took several days. Then, I set up a platform of two concrete blocks covered by a large paver.
I have always thought that the reason this statue frequently falls over is that the wings make it top-heavy. In fact, that is part of the problem. The other part, I found, is that the base is not level. So I attached some plastic “splints” to give it a steady footing. Then, I used a funnel to insert an entire bag of sand in the base to give it weight at the bottom.
NOTE: I have owned this funnel longer than I have had a garden. It was originally colored bright silver. I wore it as a hat when I appeared as the Wizard of Oz’s Tin Man in a costume contest. The silver spray paint with glitter that I used to slick back my hair was not removable by soap and water as had been advertised. For the next two weeks, I had the appearance of a woman with very shiny dandruff. The good news is, I won third place!
Once the statue was stable, I repaired the hole. A soccer ball had torn up in a nearby park, so I used a bit of that rubber as a base. I threaded yarn through so I could pull the fragment tight against the stone from within, then seal with epoxy. Once dry, I used exterior mortar to cover the patch.
1/21/2017 update —
The final result of the repairs:
Thanks to Dan Kijak for instructional video on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lws1IMH8jM