Growing pains of a teenage allotment
Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 10:52 pm
Dahlis thought this might be interesting, so here goes.
Here you see what happens when a scavenger gets hold of odds and ends. The stuff on the right is a mishmash of old duckboards, corrugated metal [should I have said corroded?] and bits of wood. It covers a small square of bindweed and grass in the hope it will disappear. This was once dug over about 2 years ago, but I never had time to decide what to do with it.
The door? Yes, it was dumped on the site and I brought it over. I thought it would be the door to the shed you see, until I realised it would bring the whole flimsy structure down. Actually, I've managed to use it in one corner as a windbreak. The side of an infant's cot was discovered dumped on an overgrown allotment and used at one time to make a barrier between path and soil, but the grass won the unequal battle. Behind it is a cage of leaves slowly decomposing. I get them from the gardeners at school, who would otherwise have to chuck them into a skip.
Just when I had bodged up a door of sorts from a semi-rotted gate and some bits of wood, I discovered a suitable door - yes, you've guessed - dumped at the other end of the allotments [all the heavier things I've salvaged are from the other end]. Now the garbage in front of the shed has been chopped up to frame raised beds.
The shed has been cobbled together out of bits of wood of various degrees of unsoundness and cladded with felt and bits of corrugated metal. I now need a few more barrels to catch water off the roof.
The older I get, the more angry I get at waste and doing all this has brought home to me how much wastage there is around of stuff we could really use to advantage.
If you're all asleep by now, blame Dahlis!
mike
Here you see what happens when a scavenger gets hold of odds and ends. The stuff on the right is a mishmash of old duckboards, corrugated metal [should I have said corroded?] and bits of wood. It covers a small square of bindweed and grass in the hope it will disappear. This was once dug over about 2 years ago, but I never had time to decide what to do with it.
The door? Yes, it was dumped on the site and I brought it over. I thought it would be the door to the shed you see, until I realised it would bring the whole flimsy structure down. Actually, I've managed to use it in one corner as a windbreak. The side of an infant's cot was discovered dumped on an overgrown allotment and used at one time to make a barrier between path and soil, but the grass won the unequal battle. Behind it is a cage of leaves slowly decomposing. I get them from the gardeners at school, who would otherwise have to chuck them into a skip.
Just when I had bodged up a door of sorts from a semi-rotted gate and some bits of wood, I discovered a suitable door - yes, you've guessed - dumped at the other end of the allotments [all the heavier things I've salvaged are from the other end]. Now the garbage in front of the shed has been chopped up to frame raised beds.
The shed has been cobbled together out of bits of wood of various degrees of unsoundness and cladded with felt and bits of corrugated metal. I now need a few more barrels to catch water off the roof.
The older I get, the more angry I get at waste and doing all this has brought home to me how much wastage there is around of stuff we could really use to advantage.
If you're all asleep by now, blame Dahlis!
mike
