Garden tray

Some years ago, I had cut the top portion of a 200 litre plastic barrel to have an open mouth for easy cleaning and access to water. This cut off portion was lying around as junk in the garden yard.  It had no other use other than as a crude lid for a smaller barrel.  It was too crude and crooked in flatness to use it happily.  So I did not prefer it. Once I was doing some digging the earth and had to shift some soil to another place and had nothing else in sight and was a bit lazy to go in and bring the circular tray from inside. So I took this and shifted the soil.  Holding it with the load in front of my stomach was irksome. The sharp edge seemed to hurt.

Necessity is the mother of invention.  Reminding it again!

What to do to stop it from hurting?  It was also too wide and too far from the stomach to hold comfortably.  *Brilliant idea* flashed. Bend the hurting part!

I took it into the kitchen, lit the gas stove and heated the portion where I wanted the bending.  I slowly kept folding it till it reached the desired angle and took it away from the flame.  I was also ensuring that the plastic was not heated in one spot lest it melted and caught fire.  Immediately, I  poured some cold water on it to cool and harden it back. 

After a few minutes I got back to garden work, using the newly shaped tray.  Yahoooo!   It felt really wonderful. As it turned out, the slight curve at the place I bent, fitted the curve of my stomach and I could now rest against it so that carrying the weight was easier and the load got distributed to the stomach.  I am happily using it in my garden ever since.