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Spring and fall bring for forth a phenomenon I once believed unique to the United States---the Garage Sale, Yard Sale, and even the snooty sounding 'Estate Sale'.
It wasn't until a visit to Scotland a few years ago that I saw the same animal in the form of 'boot sales' in downtown Edinburgh. Multi-level garages let out parking spaces for a fee, and enterprising people sold stuff out of the trunks of their vehicles, rather than unceremoniously dumping it all on their own property.
Good junk is everywhere. There are objects out there for use as planting containers which make ordinary pots seem like basic white in a world of unlimited colors. Let your imagination take over...a Victorian toilet bowl might erupt in a green asparagus fern. I saw this very thing in Edinburgh---and I wanted it, until I tried to lift it. Shipping it would have cost a fortune, so I admired it and moved on. I have since found several domestically available potties which would make fine candidates for yard art, but my husband would have to live elsewhere, or so he says. I guess I'll do without the outhouse of my dreams... This is not to say that I have given up on doing something different in the garden, nor should you. The only requisite is a little imagination, desperation, or plain old guts when it comes to potting up your favorite plants. The only rule in this category is simple:" if you can make a lamp out of it, you can put a plant in/on/around it"... sort of like adverbs in action. That's what I really like, the stuff the neighbors either love or hate. High on this list is a large, oval Melamine serving tray, in that lovely pale lunchroom green (cracked, so it drains) with an S-curved separation through the center. I did not acquire this elegant item at an Estate Sale, I got it out of a box of kitchen things my mother was pitching out after her most recent move. The first year I had it in use, I put pink petunias in one half, and white ones in the other. My lovely Southern mother looked at it and said, "my---howinterestingdoYOUlikeit?" She thought it was awful, but refused to say so. (Mind you, this comment came from a woman who used to pull the family Buick off the side of the road to make the kids haul in good looking rocks! "Well, THEY were pretty", she declared).
The copyright of the article Contain Your Gardening Enthusiasm in Gardening in Southern U.S. is owned by Emily Levitt. Permission to republish Contain Your Gardening Enthusiasm in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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