Something Nasty in the Woodshed!!

When  you move house, you don't expect to take on other people's rubbish! We arrived at our new home last Autumn to find bags of rubbish in the front garden, the back garden home to an enourmous metal hammock, random plastic pots and old chairs, the garage full of old furniture, bits of wood, a dusty roll of old insulation and to cap it all...the front garden shed and storage areas full of old tins of paint, rusting power tools, boxes of rusting screws, ironmongery and random electric stuff....and that's just for starters!

Needless to say we had so much to do elsewhere in the house  - so sorting out the front garden shed was low on our list of priorities and in any case the winter months too cold for outdoor jobs. However a couple of weekends ago we had a dry sunny day after weeks of rain. Time to find out just what was in the woodshed!

It took most of the day sorting, sifting and cleaning....disposing of old paint is not easy these days, you can take this kind of stuff to a paint recycling centre but most of the pots were too old or not big enough quantities for that and you can't just take it to the dump if the paints are still liquid which most of these were - so we've had to book in an appointment at a specialist waste centre in Warwickshire where a chemist is on hand to identify the materials and officially sign them off!

We did find a few items of interest  amongst the mayhem though....a box of radio valves, a hydrometer, a couple of 'order of the road' badges, an old printing press and some wooden planes....I can feel a car boot sale coming on!

In the meantime, we've repainted the shed and tidied up the shelves so now it's the perfect place for potting up my fledgling plants and veggie seedlings!

Truffle and her friend like it too!

Freecycle and Recycle

January isn't the most inspiring month when it comes to gardening, grey skies, short days and cold nights - so most of the work now is maintenance and clearing. I've started building a woven fence on our garden border but more of that in a couple of weeks when my supply of hazel coppice rods arrive!!!

In the meantime I take my hat off to Oxfordshire County Council for their recycling strategy - in spite of the fact that our nearest recycling centre is in Warwickshire since the local Oxfordshire depot closed! Here we have weekly collections of plastic, metal, fabric, packaging, paper, tin and glass which means that our non-recyclable black bins are down to one bag a week.

The only problem with all this recycling lark is we have to find space for all the containers (4 black boxes for general recycling and 2 wheelie bins). Luckily we have an area in the front garden that accommodates them ....but it's all a bit of a mess. Time for a bit of a re-organise methinks but I need to find some paving slabs in order to sort it all out.

So - a quick post on our local 'freecycle' network and a plea for slabs brings a result and a nice lady from a nearby village contacts me to say she has a number of slabs looking for a new home.

Saturday morning and a few hours on Sunday shifting soil and laying up slabs and we have a result!!! Ok it's not the most inspiring part of the garden but surprisingly enough there are little nooks and crannies now where I can plant up and the whole area has given us lots more space and tidied up nicely!

Here's the before:

And here's the after: