Never Buy Potting Soil Again

This is the new thing I've recently started taking out of the trash: abandoned planters with soil still in them. The big square one has pretty nice potting soil in it, which I'm going to hold on to for the next time I need to repot a plant, or something like that. The other two are going to end up in my compost pile. I've thrown some other abandoned soil in it already. All of which brings me around to pointing out that my compost piles (there are in fact two), are in serious need of expansion...

My sister Martha makes all sorts of great assemblage art pieces out of various kinds of found objects, scrounged materials, and recycled stuff. Her art is a little hard to describe, but Joseph Cornell's boxes come to mind as a comparison. Here is a little piece she made that I have and love. I think the scene in the background and on the back is The Flume, or at least I like to think so. She has a studio in her basement full of great materials for her art, lots of stuff that I covet.

Recycling Old Shirts into Baby Clothes

My friend Tina just sent me these pics of clothes she made from recycled clothes for her new baby Tycho (I just saw him last night, and he is cute, cute, cute!). Here's what she wrote: "I'd like to make some stuffed toys for Tycho out of old clothes. I've been making him pants out of old shirts--I've sent along a picture of the latest pair and the onesie I raw-edge appliqued a matching patch onto. Despite my poor seamstressing skills, I persevere because I know soon he'll just want to wear jeans and spiderman t-shirts." Tycho's Dad calls them his 'clown clothes'. I think these are great, and her seamstressing skills are much better than she thinks! She suggests this post from another blog for advice on how to make kid's pants from your own pattern.

Fallen Fruit - Saving Good Food

I just finished The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press 2006). This book is a must-read for anyone interested in food, sustainability, the environment, and so on. I learned a lot about how food is wasted, and how to be a less wasteful eater. Anyway, towards the end of the book, he mentioned the legal principle of 'usufruct' in the context foraging food either from public places or where fruit was going to waste. I like this idea - that if others are allowing something perishable to go to waste, then you may have the right to take it and use it yourself - very interesting. In that context, he gave a footnote to this site: fallenfruit.org. The website is devoted to the idea of foraging fruit in the city (of LA, but they would like to expand their mission across the U.S.). I am very taken with the politics of this idea (I like any idea that keeps private property in its proper place), and the fallen fruit website is very much worth looking at, including the manifesto and maps. There are some apple trees on the edge of a public recreation center a five minutes walk from my house, which I noticed last Fall, and which did have edible apples growing on them. And then, walking my dog, I've discovered an old empty house lot that I think has apple trees. This Fall I am definitely going to go back, pick a bunch, and put up apple sauce. So now what I need to find in the trash is a good old fashioned apple picker! What fruit do you have growing near you that you can collect?

More Trash to Buy (and cheaper this time)

My friend the Lynneguist just sent me this link to a post on Boing Boing. Here is some more trash you can buy - a smaller and cheaper version of this trash-qua-art that I posted about some time ago. Thanks Lynne!

Great New Found Object Straight from the Trash

I was walking the dog on a trash night, when I spotted this great old column in front of someone's house. (My dog knows it's trash night, because we go out over and over again - he loves trash night almost as much as I do.) At first I thought it was a log, but as soon as I poked it with my foot, I discovered that it was an old column. It was carved from single piece of wood (so, it was a log, once upon a time). It is about 4 feet high, slightly tapered, with a decorative carving along the top. It has some very old white paint on it, and inside you can see the screw-like carving marks. I wonder how old it is? In any case, I think it's just great, and once I get my porch painted later this summer, it will make a great found object decoration. At the end of summer, I'll move it inside.

Why Do People Throw This Stuff Away?

I have to admit: I don't get it. Why would someone throw away something as basically useful and necessary as a kitchen trash can? I found each of these in the trash within just a few houses of where I live, over the course of just a few months. Each time, I assumed that it was broken or cracked, but I went to check it out anyway, because I'm always on the lookout for trash cans in which to pile up my 'green waste' (yard clippings, tree limbs, leaves, etc., that the city turns into compost). But each of these trash cans is fine. I just kept piling them up in my garage, and yesterday I gave them a pretty perfunctory cleaning, and so here they are: 3 perfectly good trash cans. Each one is made by Sterlite, which says something about just how ubiquitous their plastic products are. So, what do you think? Why do people just throw stuff like this away?