Close up of a plank in a skip.The owner of the stall which sells chocolate covered cob (hazel) nuts at The Farmers' Market, offers me a plastic bag. It is provided by Tunbridge Wells Borough Council apparently to persuade people to avoid using plastic bags. On the bag are printed the words "Thank you. By using this bag you are helping to protect the environment. He remarks on the absence of logic underlying the Council's generosity. We discuss the ugly images of dead birds and marine life where plastic bags are to blame. He tells me of one Council which provides plastic cups, which can be burnt, but, he says, the cups are so thin that two are needed, and people who use them discard them in public places regardless of their composition. I decline the Council's bag and put my purchases directly in my rucksack, but try not to feel too pleased with myself.
||A few weeks ago we donated a hydrangea, white when we acquired it, to a friend and neighbour, because the flowers had become a bright pink, which did not match our garden . Today I replace it with a feathery astilbe with delicate pyramids of cream coloured spikes. Its modesty provides a pleasing contrast to its blowzy predecessor.
4 comments:
I insist on potato-starch bin-bags, which Tom hates. Sometimes apparently those bio-plastics can actually contaminate the recyclable plastics if they're mixed up with them.
Bring us your pink hydrangeas, and we will make them blue again!
Thanks, Lucy. The Hydrangea blushed almost within days of being planted. It wasn't a bearable pink. Is it iron that you add to the soil to make them blue?
I try not to use plastic bags at all nowadays, having collected bags of various reusable materials. but what happened to the shopping basket? I have yet to see a shopping basket in a supermarket.
Come to the supermarket with us and I will show you a shopping basket! We are no longer given plastic bags and shopping baskets, cotton and jute bags and very strong re-usable woven plastic ones abound. I have a fine leather-handled rush basket from the market which carries tins and bottles sturdily.
We do nothing to turn the hydrangeas Breton blue, they just go that way, it's quite well-known I think. I'm not sure if it's iron or acid or what, some people say it's the roof slates. Too much sun makes both blue and pink ones a fairly yukky colour, mind.
Following you example I will take one of our old fashioned baskets to the supermarket next time I go, instead of the less traditional woven bags.
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