For a number of months now I have been thinking I needed a new push broom for my workshop. I’ve looked various places, held some new ones in my hands and each time rejected them because I was unwilling to pay the $30 or more asking price. Last week, while driving in Walnut Grove, I spotted out of the corner of my eye, just the kind of broom I was looking for, laying in the ditch, broken in half, metal supports twisted and handle pretty banged up. I drove a good kilometre past the spot and I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. I turned around, parked and sure enough it was as bad and good as I had hoped. I threw it in the box and drove home. However, an hour later in my workshop I had repaired the damages and I am so proud of my ‘new’ broom, more pleased than if I’d bought it new.
Driving home from Otter Coop last week, past a lumber mill, I also loaded up the back of the truck with off-cuts of various lengths of thick cedar boards; perfect for building and replacing some of the swallow boxes I needed to get up before the swallow scouts return in the next number of weeks before egg laying.
More than 20 years ago when friends were helping us move from our old place to Swallowfield, one of the volunteer mover-friends commented on how after three moving trucks full of stuff he hadn’t seen one useful thing yet. Well, he was wrong. There was lots of useful stuff I’m still reusing and reinventing. The six or more R’s as I understand them are reinvent/rethink, refuse, reduce, reuse/repair, recycle and replace/rebuy. It might seem like a chore or a practice that we do grudgingly but what if we saw it as a good creation-care practice of sorts and a great joy as well, that might grow into a habit for the sake of this good earth.