Marie

Meet Marie, enjoying her perfectly made to her size baby chair. I sold others in the past but it took time and didn't make me much. Man took this one home for a previous cat, with a calico cat from the past in mind that would always sit on a red plastic baby chair.

Marie came to my neighbour in 2016. I forgot but thanks to Facebook I know the date. I did remember he named her Leah. By the time she was adult sized I spotted her in my yard eating bread crusts thrown out for the birds. The owner is notorious for sparcely feeding his dogs. I said to her: one day, if you agree, you'll be mine.

I'll try to keep it short. I know she had loads of babies. All to be sold. But one was kept to produce even more. In 2019 formerly Leah started to come to my place to eat. She was obviously pregnant. But still went back home. In 2020, during Covid19 lockdown she came back, pregnant again. I couldn't work, had a close to three months paid holiday so I had a lot of time to spend with her. And she decided to give birth in my house. The next day the complete family was picked up by a stray cat society. I was about to start working again and with my irregular hours it was the best thing to do. The rescue people were thrilled, because they had offered the owner to 'do' both his cats for free and he refused.

When she was brought back to me three months later she almost jumped in my arms. Still I opened the back door and let her free. She never went back to her previous home. Marie has gained a lot of weight since and also her fur that was very poor came back. At the time we couldn't even see the rings on her tail.

Marie's daughter was later on picked up by neighbours and sent to SAZ because she was pregnant and roaming the streets looking for food. She was placed back in the yard and still lives at her original home. Apparently she's been taken good care of now.

But we also have Marie's granddaughter, Belle, but that's another story. Also how we named her and renamed Marie.

A Soup Of Earphones

I don't normally 'do' public trash bins. I leave that to the homeless looking for deposit bottles and cans. But one evening shortly, coming home from work fairly early and passing by, I took the time to walk around the square of the Amsterdam Central Station, hoping to get some deposit just to grab from the pavement. I got some, but then there were bins with the door opened by the scavengers, plastic bag half hanging out. Just like this one. Photo from internet but in the street running from the CS.

Then I saw this huge knot of wires on top of one pretty full bag. E-waste has a kilo price and it was easy to get out without getting my hands dirty I thought. But there was more deep down than I expected and I kept digging and digging up the soup... until I started to hit real muck and had to stop. But I think in all I got some 90 % out.

It was a weird experience and it won't make me a lot of money but I don't regret it.

I just really wonder, who has two kilos of (unused) earphones and needs to get rid of them in a public trash can?

Antique School Poster

I thought I was done showing old finds. Cleaning up my files and cloud I found this brought to me by my dog walking friend Freek September 2014.

In the before digital age school posters were a big help to visualise information in class. From my own time Apart from dull maps I remember mostly the ones with nature reproductions all originally hand painted by well-known artists. Some of those if in a good state are worth a lot of money. But there must have been more like this one for history. Some sought after names are Isings, Jetses and Koekoek.

Currently this one by De Wetstein Pfister for sale €60. But it's on a roll so newer than mine which is on a board. This may date back to before 1940 or so! It never sold having the damage you can see. So in 2015 I donated it to the thrift shop where I had just started as a volunteer then and where it eventually was sold €7,50.

Garden Table For Crops

I found this last year summer. Took it for plant pots, smaller ones that support crops like radishes or spring onions. But I didn't have any radish seeds and the spring onions were a fiasco (as well as this year, I don't know what the supermarket sold me, but if from hands full of seeds sowed not one grows normally something's not right). 

The idea is that smaller pots if raised are better protected against slugs and on top my experience (from hanging on the wooden fence) is that the rough wood helps as well. They don't like creeping up on it.

I left it behind the shed and sort of forgot about it. Never even checked condition, but at first sight it looked good.

This year I suddenly have a load of radish seeds, from a batch of expired all sorts donated to the thrift shop that I couldn't put for sale. I take take them home and experiment. Well from the bean seeds so far nothing came up. That's why.

I threw a handfull of the radish in a grow box and most came up. So I had to plant them out. Started yesterday. But I put the pots in the wrong place. Too low to the ground, overnight they were visited by slugs. Those that survived suffered from the few hours of sun that I have right there in the hottest time, between 1 and 4 pm. Actually I recently learned that radishes, and most root crops, don't like too much sun. So they should be perfect for my shadowy garden.

I then remembered the table. Behind the shed where I stored it would have been an ok place because the trees behind filter the light, but the thing is currently it's kind of a jungle from wild plants that I didn't have time for to remove straight away. And those attract bees so as long as I don't need the space they can stay.

I did have to do some cutting to pull the half overgrown table out! But found the perfect place for it by the north side of the fence, and folding it out it turned out, though old and used, to be perfectly intact. This is close by my back door and handy to keep an eye on the growth. I'll see tomorrow morning how they are doing. Now knowing that these seeds are good I can alway sow again and this time directly in the pots and I have some place for more.

The chair that came with tthe table is damaged though, but that has served as a pot stand since last year underneath the upstairs balcony. This one radish is doing well since yesterday. I forgot what experiment is in the other pot. The little pot is flowers from free seeds a supermarket hands out.

Shoe Recycling

Yesterday I found this pair of pretty good looking shoes in front of my door. But all plastic and of an unknown brand. To possibly sell but most likely bring to the recycle center.

But at closer look I found the crack in the sole of one of them. It goes quite deep and you can feel it from the inside.

Made me wonder, would they still be wearable for someone in a place where people are in need of everything, and how would they get there? Or could they be recycled?

Did some research and to my dissappointment shoe recycling is pretty nonexistent. Plastic and leather uppers can best be burnt as well as the rubber soles. As a matter of fact that is what happens to car tires.

Currently I have two pairs of totally worn-out shoes that I didn't want to claim my kilo reward for but still dump them in the textiles recycling bin instead of throwing them away. But even that seems to be useless. They'll just go to trash tomorrow.

For now I've decided to give the pair above the benefit of the doubt and claim my little reward for them. Even if later on people will send them to incineration. In the past seven months I gave them some crap but mostly hardly used and/or very fashionble textiles and shoes. Some maybe expensive. Just no big popular brands.

   

For that reason I did try to sell these. I thought I could make a couple of coins on at least intact Zaras and Bershkas. So far no luck. I'll send the whole lot together to recycle shop. I picked them up last March from the next corner.

I just hope that the previous owner of the lace boots thinks before buying cheap shoes again.

Garlic

I first read about how easy it is to grow your own garlic on Gregg Koepp's blog. A man I admire for his persistence to refuse to buy anything you don't really need, showing how you can live happily without all that stuff that is ruining the Earth.

Then reading some more in a Facebook group I gave it a try.

Here's my humble first result. A third one is still in the ground. As it's easier for me to grow in pots and planters in my shadowy city garden, needless to say I do not buy them. So many cast away by people who then suddenly have to many? Gave up a hobby? Or simply have too much money and want to replace what's still perfectly useful with newer and more shiny? Puzzle for me.

Airbnb Part 3

Today I had to cycle way out of the neighbourhood to find a bottle and can deposit automat that worked. As over the weekend lots of people want to cash in and personnel can't keep up maintaining them. Before I even arrived to the first to try I saw a tiny clear plastic bag next to a bin that was tied up closely and didn't look interesting at first sight. From distance it really looked like waste. But not being thrown in is always a good enough reason for inspection. I could't see much because it seemed to be a double layer. But one sachet of noodle soup was visible enough. The rest was a surprise. Lifting it I felt the weight of full glass. But it could have been just half empty pots of jam or so. I opened it in the kitchen between trash bag and sink, ready to throw away muck and wash hands. It wasn't necessary.

Two small bottles of beer and five sachets of noodle soup. All perfectly clean. Overcareful packaging by the tourists made the products almost fail to go to a finder. Lucky me I seem to be developing better and better eyes for this.