Plant Markers from plastic bottles

Nowadays, shampoos, hair oils, perfumes, talcs, lotions, what have you, all come in such plastic packing [as in picture above] and make way into our homes.  Once empty, a vast majority of them find no further use or reuse and have to be discarded.  But some good ones are suitable for other purposes after the original content is used up.  

I have seen many people use old Venetian Blinds for labeling their plants in the garden.  Since I cannot find the blinds here, I thought of using the spray bottles to label what I planted/sowed where. There will be so many such containers that may be handy too.  

Next time I cut up a container, I will think of more artistic patterns. There is one here that got the shape of a carrot and one like a necktie.  There will be so many options if we use our own 'recyclables'.

[Names are written with Sharpie pens.]

I hope you also noticed the 'bed dividers'.  They are granite pieces I gathered from the stone-slab cutting shop - they throw these waste pieces out in a pile for the landfills. I brought in a few and used it like this, since I cannot even think of wood on the soil due to termite menace. 

I have some spare blanks now.  

When I write the name on the top, I can still cut up that written portion later if I want to use it for other names in the next season, but the label will be slightly shorter. Squeeze the maximum out of it! 

A hand trowel for gardening

There was an old pair of hedge-pruning scissors which I tried to use in my early gardening days when I had no proper tools.  I used to try and cut small twigs with it and it was not in good condition.  It must have been from the 1930s.  We had no hedge, at least in my time. This huge pair of scissors was junk for a few decades, now one of the two cutting parts was minus - it had broken.  It was time to unjunk.  One handle of wood was good and just fine for attaching something.  There was a rusty mason's trowel, quite a wide one, which a mason had left behind because it had got separated from its rivets.  

Idea!

I took them to my friend Ramu to join the two together.  He did it simply by making two holes to the flat portion of the scissor handle [see picture] to match the two holes on the trowel and drove two screws in them.  Lo, a crude trowel.was ready!  It is a very handy tool to lift soil. I bent the trowel slightly on the sides to keep the picked up soil in place. 

Right behind the trowel is a Charaka [spinning wheel]. 

Tea coasters of wood

Looking for some small projects of wood, I came across on Pinterest dot com, this:

I had been cutting the long branches from the Almond tree to firewood size from my friend Ramu's hand saw.  

Take a close look at the beautiful teeth and smile!

The above is a larger mature branch.  While cutting this I saw a nice shape and 'rings'.  Why not make a tea coaster I thought.  I cut one slice to see how it would be.  It came with perfect and uniform thickness with no slant!  I did a few more having enjoyed that feel!!

The tree branch was pruned only two months ago.  Moisture in the branches takes more time to dry if not cut.  So I kept the slices in the sun to dry.  

I hung-stored the remaining portion of the branch in the '7' position in the picture below.

When the slices dried, the wood shrunk and the bark in some places got detached.  So I removed the bark.  I sanded both sides with 180 and 320 paper.  I tried colourless polish, but was not satisfied. Leaving them as they are would be nice I decided.  Here it is.

After I had made, I saw in an exhibition [north-east bamboo craftsmen] such coasters etc on sale!  See picture. 

My thanks to Ramu for making this pleasure project possible apart from the tree-branch cutting one which was more important.  Also hats off to German quality product, 'Wolf -Garten' pruning saw! 

Termite Sculptures

What if Captain Haddock from Tintin comics got troubled by the terrible termites.  What curses he would have mouthed at them?  

Termites are home owners' foe.  But nothing in Nature is 'unpurposefully created'.  They aerate the earth with their underground channels. We are living in their land!  Here is a brief list of ten facts about termites. [Click to read, informative].

I only imitate Captain Haddock with just a couple of curses when I see termites damaging wood and paper at home or in the Yarden.  They can do immense damage.  They can even reach wooden rafters and reapers as I noticed in our century old tiled roof. It was 20 feet high.  I wondered how they went so high rising 'through' the walls!  But when another old smaller structure in the premise was demolished, their handiwork was on view. Let me show some pictures. 

Removal of roof tiles exposed the work of termites on rafters resting on walls.

Look at the reaper. Teak is said to be termite resistant because they do not like the oil in it.  When the oil dries up with ageing of wood, they will be vulnerable.

There were many rafters eaten up by termites and some were precariously close to collapsing! 

This one had been lowered carefully and I observed something here!! So I asked the carpenter to cut the portion carefully.  Then I happened to find many damaged ones in the lot and set aside all those that had some appeal, before the wood was taken for resizing for reusing the fine teak wood required for the new house that has now come up.  

I had kept the others aside, as if on display. 

Now this is what I created from the great sculptures created clandestinely in the walls by the 'thundering termites'.  The set becomes a part of my Yarden. I nailed all of them in line to a termite damaged reaper which formed a base and rested on two nails on the wall. There was another termite torn plank that also went up on show.  The badly defaced pieces were used for the hot water boiler as fuel.

This is the 'Sculptor'. Many thousands of them will be working on shift basis!

Group Picture! Closer view of my latest 'Junk Project'.  That was the purpose of this post.

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Now let me show how dangerous and what a nuisance these can be.  There is no guarantee of any wood or item containing cellulose to survive.  If they are not moved or noticed, they can eat up the whole thing.  This was a 2 1/2 inch 'Termite Tower' risen from a little crack in our room floor.  They had completely eaten the books in a book shelf that was not noticed for about 2 months!  Many books were lost that way. They had come up through the wall and the shelf was embedded in the wall.

Some wood kept for a week were attacked. Look how they come up through the gaps in the floor. 

A toy bat had a lot of cellulose!! 

A simple trellis I made was damaged some years ago.

They attack the bark of trees.  

An old wooden tub attacked from its base, despite keeping on bricks. Since it was noticed soon, it could be saved.

An old radio cabinet, junked but not disposed, suffered.  They had come through the crack in the old wall.

A piece of torn rattan from a junked chair deliberately kept on the ground to see if they attacked, was surely attacked - in 4 days!

As such, I do not use much wood that touches the ground, in my Yarden.

Vintage tile chips rescued and reused

This post is an exact copy I have added to my other blog related to Gardening. [click]

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My workplace is in a century old palatial building that was built by the Mysore King.  

Cheluvamba Vilas

Some years ago, they were replacing the entire original mosaic floor of a room.  The beautiful little chips in perfect geometrical shapes and dimensions were being broken.  It was an exercise too difficult to watch and I wish not to divulge into detail. 

That is one of the three mansions built for the three Princesses at that time.  All the structures are a delight to connoisseurs.  Their interiors are exquisite.  Just to show how varied the patterns and colours were, in many such palatial buildings, let me show you the flooring of the other mansion [Karanji Mansion] which I visited some time ago.

This was not in good shape.

Now it houses the PTC.

Now let me come to ours.  Pictured below is a portion of the original floor and design the entire floor area had.  Observe the shapes and colours. They had been imported from England at the time of building these mansions.  Such mosaic floors of that period are so pleasing to the eye.

The broken floor debris were being heaped in the room to be loaded to trucks for landfills.  So sad.  Being a lover of heritage, I thought of preserving a tiny portion of these chips in my home.  In "Dave's Garden" I had seen what gardeners create with mosaic chips.  So I randomly picked up some of those to try my hand.  Mosaic art is a vast and creative subject many gardeners and hobbyists do for passion.

'Stepping stones' was an idea I had in mind. Those chips were now separate.  I tried different combinations and found that many different patterns were possible.  I set about working on the project.  Sand and cement were ready.  I put a piece of chicken mesh at the bottom for extra strength and carefully filled cement and placed the chips in the patterns I created.  See picture of 'work in progress': 

Five distinct patterns were made from the available good chips and embedded the 'stepping stones' in my yard, after proper curing.

The following picture shows the work I did in the centre of our living room with better pieces. 

But now we can see only one half of it.  Shortly after this was created, it so happened that a wall ran through the hall at that very spot.  Picture below shows the base for the wall getting ready. Observe the visible portion of tiles.