Friday, May 16, 2014

I started my day by getting the garbage and recycling out to the curb. Our recycling is changing next time and from here on in I’ll have to refer to the Recycle Guide to see what goes where. The only good thing I can see is that I’ll no longer need to sort paper, plastic, etc.; the bad news is that much of what we recycled at the curb will now have to be returned to the depot.

I made an interesting observation while I was doing this, and I’m not sure it is a good thing. For the past two weeks (and we recycle only every two weeks) I have been hidden inside the house; no volunteer work and no shopping either. Today’s recycle loads were considerably down from what I would normally have. We always have a huge bag of paper; today was a bag with room to spare. We usually have an almost-full bag of plastic; today only half a bag. We had more cans and glass jars than normal but I’m wondering if the little bit of shopping I do (at least I don’t think I do much) adds a lot to the recycling.

I spent the rest of the morning working in the yard with Pat. I managed to get two of the beds cleared of weeds, and the grass clippings raked up. Pat has been busy with the hoe digging the weeds out and the larger ones were in piles waiting to be bagged. I was on my hands and knees getting those pesky little ones that will be a foot tall if we turn our backs on them for a week. The grass was mowed a week ago but it was too wet to be bagged so that’s why there was raking to be done.

I couldn’t help but think of Mum paying us five cents for every paint pail of weeds we pulled in the garden; mostly purslane if I remember correctly. If someone would pay me five cents for every pail it would keep me in quilting supplies for a year! And from that thought I wondered about the condition of the out house on the farm; we dumped those pails in the hole; not much kills that purslane so it could be a jungle in there!