My friend Ali organises the Father’s Day stall at school. And she is a crafty soul. Everything she produces has a bit of a home made, recycled theme.
And my children bought all the good ones for Clive!
He got some sunflower seeds. I like them in the little sewn up package. Succulents in tins, and some soap packaged in old maps. Oh, and one cent coin cuff links.
Great work Ali and co.
Every couple of years someone makes a ‘garden chair’, that is, a chair turned into a garden, for the Art4All chair auction. This year Elise is having a crack …
She bought a white chair from the tip shop last weekend. She took it apart. And spray painted it black. And put it back together with a handy hessian and plastic ‘pouch’ now suspended under the seat. And filled the pouch with soil. And added plants.
She made it at my house … lucky me. I get to look at it (ie. store it and water it and keep it in tip top condition) for 4 weeks. All I can say is that if survives it’s time with me with the current amount of attention I am paying to house duties, it will survive anywhere!
Luckily she’s filled it up with succulents. And geraniums … so it’s pretty much indestructible. Fingers crossed …
It looks great, doesn’t it?
It seems to me that every paddock on my sister’s farm has an old bath tub or sink in it. They make perfect water troughs for sheep. Pricey is always admiring free tubs and sinks (if he didn’t have 4 kids and a million and one baby items filling the Kia Grande Carnivale to the roof I suspect, for example, that the sink we ripped out of our kitchen would have headed back to the farm to lounge in a paddock).
So maybe it’s a country thing. The shared love of recycling bathtubs and sinks outdoors …
Cos … check out the fish pond at Ali’s house.
The pastel pink iron tub is now a rustic fish pond, with a pump and real live growing plants and everything. And I think when they had ducks it may have doubled as a ‘duck pond’. And look, Ali’s got some little ducks to remind her of the real ones.
Ali has also recycled a letterbox in the back garden in the corner of the vegie patch. It looks cute. I didn’t ask her why she has it – maybe it’s for letter to santa? Or the tooth fairy? Her kids do seem a bit old for this type of thing though …
And of course there are chooks, and a functioning and productive vegie patch that is always amazing in summer and all sorts tins and recycled pots with plants in them. And a lemon tree. I should have taken a photo. Ali really loves her lemon tree …
Ali’s house really is like a farm, but in the city.
the second hand city 