Crazy allotment related habits

[busy_lizzie]

Love that picture of all of Heldis bath toys now at the allotment, but how scarey for the birds and the resident frogs!   ;D  Great idea though! One of our lottie neighbours used coloured balls this year on top of his canes, and it just looked like a Diurmud Gavin installation. When we first got an allotment it was indeed pallets that we were obsessed with.  It was a major red letter day whenever we got one from a skip.  We once had 17 pallets on our drive which really confused the neighbours.  :D busy_lizzie

[busy_lizzie]

[Emagggie]

It's canes of any kind here. Never seem to have enough.Old raspberry canes, willow withies (get them when a very kind person from the local Nat. Hist. Soc. cuts them down on the common and leaves them for folk to help themselves), or any other that I can find. I found some little 'windmill' thingies from alice bands (remember the things on springs that bobbed about when you moved your head?) Had a boxfull in the attic and put them on cane ends. Very colourful and seemed to scare the birdies with their whirring. ;D

[Heldi]

I know it's wrong...but it feels sooo good  :o  ;D 

[ACE]

you'll go blind you know. 8).

[Barnowl]

I found a stash of old tennis balls that had lost their bounce. So our lottie was covered in fluorescent balls...

[cornykev]

;D ;D  Seen that tennis ball idea on lottie programme (can't remember what its called) they are put on canes then net on top balls stop net ripping is that right Barnowl ( must get some balls ). :-X :-*

[Barnowl]

Yes - I did it both to hold netting up and to stop us poking our eyes out on the canes. It amused the neighbours.

I also hoped the colour, a particularly unpleasant fluorescent green, would be a deterrent. They lost their glow after a few months - probably all sorts of noxious dye has trickled into my beds and I've lost my organic status  :-\

But I have found some jumbo metal free clothes pegs which are also fluorescent  (pinks yellow and greens) to hold netting on to canes, so all is not lost. :)

[miniroots]

Oh it's so nice to know I'm not alone...
My secrets are safe with yous all, aren't they?  It's so therapeutic to confess...

[teresa]

I have raided skips and anything in the house to be thrown I check to see if I can use down lottie.
But OH worries when we go visiting and they say they are throwing something out my eyes light up yep I see it down lottie and get it.

[manicscousers]

the other thing is going for a meal atsomeone you don't know very well, they're THROWING veg peelings in the bin, I want to shout at them  :-X

[SMP1704]

I have a few of those........have to admit to raiding a skip in broad daylight in my work clothes.  but it was blue pipe, metres and metres of it, but the workman had been very thoughtless and it had been mangled up with all sorts of other building rubbish.  In the course of my struggles, I managed to get grey undercoat over my trousers (did have another meeting to go to ((perhaps someone should call the ambulance?)) so there I was sloshing bottled water all over my legs in a layby.........

Saw some lovely piles of leaves coming back from the dry cleaners, but sadly didn't have any bags in the car - note to self, must keep a stock of black sacks in the car

Also got the pallet thingy sussed.  Walked into the local car parts place - in my lottie clothes - and asked if I could take some of their pallets.  Now have an open invitation to help myself, but no-one has ever asked why I want them, so perhaps it is normal after all????

[Emagggie]

Yep, whenever I've been on pallet scrounge,no-one has queried what I want them for, but been glad for me to take them.
Found a skip with some industrial strength black bags in whilst on a dog walk recently.and sent BW back with the car to get them. Sliced them open and used them for cover today. I just love skips....... ;D

[kt.]

Our recycling / skip centre does not allow you to take anything out...... hypocrits really as when you go late - you see them taknig stuff out >:(

[Common_Clay]

Upturned plastic bottles on canes do help to keep birds away

If you cut three 1" slits down the length of empty bottles (leaving the flap hinged on the same edge for each slit) then the wind gets in them and turns them around. The birds don't seem to stick around with the noise.

[moonbeam]

Our crazy habit is cd discs they are all over the place suposed to be to frighten the pigeons but it dosent seem to work they are that many of them i think they treat it as there disco.

[mc55]

my work colleagues get a strange look on their faces when I start to make paper pots in the office ... OH has caught onto the 'it'll be useful at the lottie' bug and brought me home a huge tin bath last week  :o

[MattD]

I've read this thread thinking how much I identify with all the stories here.  Is it because we all have allotments that we think like this, or do we have allotments because we are like this?

One of my most satisfying feelings is when you've stored some apparently useless odd thing for ages thinking "that will come in useful one day", and then that day does come and you dive into wherever you stored it and emerge yelling triumphantly. 

Then you feel totally justified in having had it fall out of the shed every time you reached into the back, or tripping over it somewhere, or having had it fall out of cupboards onto your head, probably with some long suffering OH moaning about it.

It's this attitude of making full use of things which will save the world, and I think its fundamental to what allotments are all about.  I hope my kids grow up appreciating that and don't think saving the planet is all about driving electric cars and building wind farms. 

Waste not, want not......

Matt

[cornykev]

Second that mate.   :D :D :D

[kt.]

My garden shed, lottie and attic are all full of stuff like that...... for that just in case factor ::)

[moonbells]

Our recycling / skip centre does not allow you to take anything out...... hypocrits really as when you go late - you see them taknig stuff out >:(

Neither does ours but I have learned to go up to a workman and ask how much they want for whatever. I am always on the lookout for water storage.

I've gained a waterbutt for a quid and an old 25 gall water tank for 80p (cos it was all I had on me!). OK the tank took a further fiver for waterproof and UVproof glue to patch up the pipe hole, and the butt cost me a tenner for a lid, but still way less than buying them new.

moonbells