Two rather odd uses of scrap again.

When we designed the plot here and had it terraced we planted the top area with fruit trees as an orchard. One of the Permaculture ideas is that you try to keep things that need a lot of attention near the house and those you visit only at certain times of year further away. The path up tom the top is very steep which doesn’t normally matter but this winter has been very wet so when Laura and I started clearing around the trees ready for giving them manure to feed them, and a cardboard mulch to make picking easier in the Autumn, we found ourselves slipping and sliding on the mud. It got so dangerous that we had to stop – especially as carrying trugs of muck and armfuls of cardboard made everything harder. So I decided we needed to make the steepest parts of the slope into steps.

The fence pins are being used for at least the third time. John originally bought them to hold up stock fencing to grow peas over. I then used them to fence round some young trees to stop them being accidentally mown down. And now they are holding back the risers. The wood is a mix of offcuts and some lengths Danny used to make a former to steam bend handles round – hence the holes for pegs.

The second is complete serendipity. In one of the winter storms a piece of an ornamental tree in the lower garden broke off. I tidied it all up and put the twigs on a slow rot pile by the stream which will eventually raise the bank there a bit. To my amazement the twigs flowered! So I cut some and brought them into the kitchen.

Apologies for the poor quality of the photos – it is grey and raining (again!) so the light is very poor.

Scrap Happy is curated by Kate to showcase any project that keeps scrap from being thrown away. My fellow scrapsters are

Kate, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, Jan,
Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera,
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Viv, Karrin,  Alissa,
Tierney, Hannah and Maggie