Bath Anyone??

There is honestly nothing better than good friends who, when they hear you are hunting for old baths, tell you they have several and you can have them.  No they won’t take payment, they are happy to have them off their land and being useful.

Can’t get better than that.  Our good friend Mick had two baths. One is cast iron the other is tin and has a rusted hole in the base.

Top bath has the hole in it, bottom one is cast iron and needs two strong men to move it.

While I was thinking I could probably seal up the hole and use it as a wicking bed, at midnight as always, the solution came to me. I will use that bath – providing it fits in the shade house – as a new worm farm.  The hole, with some fine mesh over it, will let the worm wee trickle into a bucket to be used as liquid fertilizer.  Brilliant.

The worm farm I have at the moment, while it is good, will eventually be too small and I think the bath will provide the worms all the space they need and all the vermicast I need and want.

While we were also at Mick’s I came home with two grocery bags full of the most delicious lemons.  Mick  had given me some of these lemons last year and they are just gorgeous.  Heaps of juice, wonderful rind and just right for lemon meringue pies, lemon butter and lemonade.  He also gave me a bag of oranges which he tells me you can’t eat as they aren’t as sweet as most eating oranges but they should be good for marmalade. He also dropped a humongous hint that he loves marmalade and no one in his household has time to make it.   So he is now my chief marmalade tester and as soon as I have a batch made he will try it for me.

On then to Mick’s sons place to pick up three more cast iron baths. Kyle, like Mick, was glad to see them go. He is sure there are more baths around and will hunt for them and drop them off, plus while on his travels for his work he said he can locate more baths and will let me know.  Awesome.

I love that these baths are so colourful. I love that they are cast iron and the oldest is dated around 1957 and I love the fact that while they look rusted they actually aren’t and will probably outlive me.  There’s nothing like a colourful vegetable garden even if it is only the beds the vegies are in.

I also picked up some fallen Walnuts at Kyles and am going to have a go at growing a walnut tree and  I want to try dyeing some wool with walnut dye. Not sure how either experiment will go but it’s worth a try.  After all James I and I managed to get those acorns growing. They are just starting to put new shoots up above the soil so surely we might succeed with walnuts?  Hmmm perhaps Kyle would like some Oak Trees for his place????

Before I go – today’s bit of colour comes from my Zygo cactus.  It was potted up a while ago and has been virtually ignored ever since apart from watering it when I water everything else in the shade house.  As I normally can’t get it to flower at all maybe neglect is the way to go.