Recycling old broken pots

The neighbour has many big clay pots, many are in their balcony garden.  They had discarded a couple of cracked and broken pots outside their house.  They looked strong enough and their bottom quarter were still in tact.  Why not I use that as shallow pots?  I brought them in with the help of cousin Subbu and while they were being carried, I felt the weight! They appeared old, good and strong.

In this picture, I had already worked on one, by breaking away the damaged portion carefully. 

Trimmed the second one too.  Where I worked and the tools I used are visible.

In a short while, two sturdy shallow pots were ready. They can be used either for growing the smaller rain lilies or for starting seeds. I further trimmed the broken pieces which will be useful for covering the drain holes in the pot, before filling with soil. I have already reused smaller broken pots into rain lily holders.

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. 

Rustic Garden Board

There was a small wooden staircase on the open balcony having 5 planks for steps.  Two were missing and the rest were rickety.  It was a risky affair to step on them. We had to jump down or climb back, with the support of the old and shaky wooden handrails.  You cannot blame the carpenter because it bore the brunt of all weather since 1911 without a break.

Redoing with new planks was a costly affair.  So, I removed the planks and built the steps myself out of bricks and stone slabs [see picture below]. This was some years ago when we moved in to live in the house built by my great grandfather in the year mentioned above.  It had been rented out from 1950 to 1997 to the same tenant.  Tenants cannot be expected to take care of these things!

Seen in this picture is what I built after removing the planks.

These teak wood planks were now useless for any other wood work.  I had kept them aside along with other junk, instead of using them as firewood, but that is not the mentality of 'junk accumulators'!

In the meanwhile, I had come across a nice gardening website, Dave's Garden, where gardeners had shared their pictures.  It was about creative use of old wood.  They were used as name boards and nicely displayed, as if it was old.  Rustic.  After seeing such pictures, I thought there was a new project for me to do at home with these.  

What to engrave on them?  It is two feet across. To imitate 'Dave's Garden' I thought of 'Dinu's Garden'.  The letters were 'one too many' for that width and needed to be shortened.  So I remembered another word from my younger days when I used to read a lot of wonderful comic stories of The Phantom.  In one of them, there was 'Isle of Eden'.  Here, The Phantom had kept his pets - tigers, lions and many species of animals all living in harmony.  The word 'Eden' seemed to fit in to the width of the plank. I wanted it to sound like Dave's Garden [DG], due to my obsession with it, but in the end, it turned out to be 'Dinu's Eden'. The engraved portion was painted with 'poster colour' for visual effect.

This is in the garden which has shifted now.

This was placed in the new yard on the other side of the plot.

Googling to link Phantom's Eden, I am glad I found this place where you can read the entire comic - Isle of Eden.  [click on the link]. In fact, there is a great fan following of Lee Falk's Phantom, even now!  

My carpentry skills and some patience came in handy.  Patience, because the surface of the plank is so brittle that it had to be engraved very carefully, lest the wood chipped away. Cutting the letters was a precision job.

Close up showing wood surface

Fortunately, it came off well, much to my delight.  "Dinu's Eden" is where many critters and creatures live in harmony, like in Phantom's Eden, if not tigers, lions or elephants.

Some photos.

This board will take another place as more changes have taken place to this side of the yard and is now having a smaller garden area. This is a picture from the recent archive. 

Some changes can be seen to that part of the yard here.  

It has been exposed to the vagaries of climate all of its hundred years. It should last for some more years since it is now not facing the sky.  It will be put up once the reshaped garden gets ready.