I got an email from a woman I met on FreeCycle.org and she informed me that her driveway was full of good soil. Without hesitation, I loaded up my shovel and a bunch of buckets and was off. Holy moly! I don't know how much soil weighs, but my back feels tired. Take a look at this load of dirt. It was just enough to fill the second half of the green planter box!
On the way home, I decided to swing by the construction site where I scored all that free wood. There was a guy named Manny just hanging out and smoking a big fat cigar. He looked at me like a bouncer looks at nerd trying to get into a club. I immediately got the vibe that I was not welcome and he was gunna prove it. Right then, I notice a pile of beautiful pallets laying next to the dumpster. I smiled and said, "Hey. Are you going to throw those pallets in the trash?". His guard went down and he happily offered them to me. As I loaded the pallets, I kept asking questions. Do you have any broken concrete? Do you have any plywood that might get trashed? Next thing you know, I'm getting a personal tour through the construction site. I'd point at something and Manny would nod yes or no. Long story short, he said I could drive my car on to the site and load anything I wanted. Unfortunately, I was out of room after loading all that dirt and a bunch of pallets.
I went back to the little strip of land and unloaded pallets and dumped the dirt in the green planter box, then went back to the construction site. I know I keep coming back to the same old word, but jackpot! Yes, I got all this wood and these cinder blocks for free!
As I'm unloading the loot, my neighbor Lisa came by and blessed me with an AWESOME lawn mower! Talk about sustainability, this thing runs on human power! I really don't know how it happened, but for some reason my wife became driven to mow. She pushed that thing all around and ended up making the grass look very nice!
Inspired by a plethora of free gardening booty, I decided to tackle the cinder bock planter box. It sure felt like I was going to have enough blocks, but as you can see I might need to FreeCycle till I find another free source of cinder blocks.
Here's what the wall looked like at the end of the day. Not bad.
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Yeah! Working the land - I love it. I'm interested to learn about taking snippets of trees and planting them in your Garden... Juan B style.
ReplyDeleteHe used to tell me that you could cut any tree/plant and put it in a paper bag and plant it in the ground... I'm all for free plants... I think you can do it with fruit tree too.