Friday Forage

Friday is garbage/recyclables/green waste collection day in my neighborhood. This past weekend was the May holiday weekend in Canada and the traditional start of gardening, though there are a lot of folks like me who start earlier. Plastic plant pots are accepted as a recyclable here and I was hoping to intercept some for reuse, so I went for a walk around my block with my grocery tote cart. Jackpot! I came back with 24 small pots and 5 trays for holding them and the water that spills out the bottom when you water them. They went into the greenhouse. I also got a couple of 2 liter pop bottles to use as waterers or upside down planters. I also got some lengths of one foot wide 1/8" green plastic mesh. This is sturdy stuff that will be effective barriers to keep cats out of planters and squirrels off of beds.

The successful foraging revved me up to actually reuse some of the things I've accumulated for reuse. I set up a 2 gallon container with a push-button nozzle that formerly held detergent to hang over a reused laundry sink with a reused bucket under its outlet as a quick, easy, water-economical hand-washing station in the garden. Using the spray nozzle on the hose is wasteful overkill for hand-washing, though that nozzle will be great for rough cleaning root vegetable before taking them into the house. The bucket underneath means that the soil-laden (as in organic gardening residue) water can be reused to water the garden or shrubs.

The bucket under the laundry sink had been used for wood scraps in the shop, so I needed a replacement for that. Some 5 gallon containers that I filled with water after painting them black to use as a heat sink in the greenhouse had gone bust, so I cut the top off one to use it as a waste bin. I even reused the handle from the container's top by wiring it to the bin's side with a scrap wire tire lying on the shop floor.

I have a small tray of pegboard hooks of various types and sizes in the shop. Currently what pegboard I have is populated with these to my liking. I was looking, however, for a better way to hang some of our outdoor/garden decor. I have a clay angel face I would love to have on my garden shed door. The shed is made of double layerRubbermaid plastic. How to hang it? I got out my cordless drill and put a single hole in the outside plastic layer. In went a pegboard hook and now I have a wind-resistent way to hang my angel face. I found the hooks also fit into the holes in my T-bar pots that I use for fencing and trellis. A colorful Mexican sun now graces the corner of the fence. A hole big enough to hold a hook doesn't effect the soundness of aluminum siding, so the large enameled metal sun we got on our last trip to the Southwest is now hanging on the wall facing the deck.