Everything Pinterest Says Is A Lie

Unless it has to do with the overwhelming coolness of Loki/Tom Hiddleston, everything Pinterest says is a lie. Those easy, cute cupcakes took four hours to decorate. That simple rag rug like Grandma used to make; I guarantee you she only made one once and then said, “Never. Again.” And that strawberry planter box out of a simple pallet; all I can say is that whoever made that one up is the devil.

The first problem with the pallet-cum-strawberry-box is that the simple pallet shown on Pinterest is not a simple pallet. Speaking as a person whose husband brings pallets home from a diesel shop, the pallet shown on Pinterest is sort of the the Cadillac of pallets. Not only that, but it looks like it was power-washed. Or maybe carefully constructed by helpful lawn gnomes from hand selected rough cedar planks. The point is, no pallet from the real world is that pretty.

Next problem: look how easily we just sawed that pallet into three perfectly matching pieces! No. That's a scam. Unless you are willing to use a table saw on that pallet, which seems a mite unwieldy to me, you're left with few tenable options. I suppose you could go all Texas Chain Saw Massacre on that pallet's expletive deleted but that also seems unlikely to result in even cutting. There are circular hand saws and the ever-dubious Sawzall, but once again, those tools do not fall under the category of simple. 

That leaves your trusty, rusty hand saw. That, folks, is how I sawed my pallet. It was a bit like sawing through a glass-sliver-encrusted piece of granite. Unless you have the patience of a saint and Kevlar gloves, that is just not going to go well. I have splinters in my splinters.

I admit, the instructions from this pin say something about trimming excess wood away and they also tell you to find a very specific type of pallet. Need I repeat: these things negate all use of the word simple. Going on with the instructions, we see the recommendation of owning a jigsaw (oops) and putting chicken wire in the bottom with a layer of weed block over that so you don't have to construct a floor (Yay! Lacerations!) Then there's some gettin' fancy with straw and finally the most artistically planted strawberries you have ever seen. 

Okay, now it is time for my disclaimer. Presumably, the owner of the blog Lovely Greens did in fact make the Pinterest pallet box. This blogger is clearly both more power tool savvy and better at planning ahead than I am. It is probably possible to make a pallet box every bit as swanky as hers if you follow her instructions to the letter. She deserved to have her blog cited and an award for her beautiful box. She also has a very pretty cat. You should probably be reading her blog instead of this one if you have DIY aspirations. All I'm saying is it isn't as easy as Pinterest makes it look.

Now on to my tutorial for how to make a half-vast pallet strawberry planter with half-vast plans. I am nothing if not amusing, eh? So I started with my grubby, splintery, totally unlovely pallet and sawed it up using a hand saw and creative profanity. At that point, I was not thinking in terms of amusing blog anecdotes, so I wasn't taking pictures.

My pallet was of a more plebeian variety than Ms. Lovely Greens's. It was smaller, for one thing. It's planks were all wonky and uneven. And it might produce carcinogenic strawberries because I have no idea if it had been chemically treated. But you can't have everything, right?

After I sawed mine up, I realized that I should have just left it alone. Since it was too late, I had already lost count of my splinters, and I had extra plywood lying around I began cobbling together a sort of shallow box with more slats on the bottom than the top. The slats on top were meant to divide the strawberry plants while the slats on the bottom were meant to hold in the dirt. The general idea was portability and keeping my strawberry patch from looking like an orgy of tarantulas. I'm also working under the unscientific assumption that my apparatus might discourage slugs, since voodoo rituals seem to have no effect.

Back to my embarrassing attempt at carpentry... It quickly became apparent to me that there was no way I was going to create a solid floor with the plywood and spare pallet slats I had. For one, the thought of sawing all that plywood into appropriately sized pieces with a hand saw threatened to bring on a prolonged bout of hysteria. For another thing, prying slats off of old pallets that have been sitting outdoors for indeterminate years is every bit as easy as bench pressing the Rock of Gibraltar. It takes about that much strength too. The pallet slat will break into splinters perfect for staking vampires or starting camp fires before you will ever manage to pull those nails loose.

Once I got a box floor with gaps in it no more than an inch wide, I decided that was sufficient and I could now afford to cheat. I do not have a good relationship with chicken wire and I used up all the weed block fabric a couple of years ago when I was making a brick patio of which I am still intensely proud (see entry Last Week I Ruined the Lives of Thousands of Ants). I went for the old standby--newspaper. Layered newspaper is a great way to conquer many garden problems. If you believe anything Pinterest says, you can make it into biodegradable pots, or lay it down as weed-blocker, or sort of mulch around plants with it to hold in extra moisture. As it happens, you can also put in in the bottom of your pallet planter box when you get tired of playing Unstoppable Force/Immovable Object with petrified pallet nails.

After that, it was as simple as filling the box with dirt and putting the strawberries in it. And figuring out where to put the box. And then figuring out how to move the box because I was too dumb to build it where I wanted it. And then watering it without making all the soil run out in a mudslide of life-ruining proportions.

I'm not recommending you go about this project the way I did. As a matter of fact, if you have the means, it would be a heck of a lot easier to make this box out of cedar slats and 4x4 posts and forget about the masochistic messing about with old pallets. If you have pallets lying about and a desire to do this project frugally, then you should definitely follow Lovely Greens's instructions. But if you want to laugh at someone else's expense, I'm your gal. I feel I owe an apology to Mr. Steill who did his level best to teach me something in Wood Shop. 

By the way, even my photography is a lie. I've shown you the box I made that turned out looking pretty good mostly because I started out with a basically complete pallet box and only had to put sides on it. The one I was describing in the above tutorial is this masterpiece:

Incidentally, gardening/carpentry projects become doubly challenging in gale force winds. I have no evidence of the added difficulty except for this:

Katniss Everdeen's braids never had to put up with this expletive deleted...

The Solemnity of Abandoned Places

The change of seasons always seems sudden to me. A few days into March, it snows and ices. A few days later, I'm out in the yard in a tank top starting flower seeds in pots. A couple of days after that, it's raining like the first days of Noah, and I'm thinking I should've saved the seeds a little while longer. I figured I was out of danger of frost, but I forgot about flood.

To me, that drives home the point of how stupid it is to have "first day of Spring" marked on the calendar as though you can pin that down. I figure the daffodils know when spring is happening. I've seen their leaves poking up through the dirt, so it's happening. But the other thing the daffodils and I know is that spring doesn't come. It doesn't arrive. It happens and goes on happening and you can't really do anything but kind of sway in the breeze.

For us, that means getting outside and maybe even off the road when the getting is good. We had gotten it in our giddy heads to try trapping crayfish in the river this spring. Something about March brings out the hunter/gatherer in us. So when the weather was lovely, we put out a trap. Luckily the weather was still lovely the next day when we went to check it. Alas, our trap yielded no crayfish, nor even any mudbugs as the colloquialism goes. Two extremely confused minnows were hanging out waiting to be traumatized further before being set free.

We were undaunted. Crayfish aren't half as interesting as the things available to be seen on river banks. Belted Kingfishers with their messy hair-dos, chasing and chittering. A safe on its side in the middle of the river. Monster dog footprints. A whole Chevrolet Bel Air embedded in the river bank. (Didn't get a picture of that one.) I don't approve of litter, truly, yet at the same time the strange traces of human presence always create a solemn ambiance where they intrude.

After encountering the safe and the car, the kingfishers and the sunshine, I had to drive. A bizarre recipe, I know. Apparently, rusted metal makes me thirst for adventure. And apparently adventure for me is defined by abandoned buildings and creepy birds. That is exactly what we found on one of the great roads around here that is not wide enough for two goats to pass abreast, but somehow people drive down it with wagons full of extra-large round bails.

Abandoned houses always appear very solemn from the outside. There's something a little bit artistic about the vines climbing up them and the broken glass and the air of solitude. The chicken house with its nesting boxes still full of straw. The forlorn little pond. The trees marching right up to the siding. The giant black headed vultures alighting on the roof. Yikes! Maybe we should get out of here... I'm not sure whether they saw Abraham and imagined him with dipping sauce packets, or whether they were simply attracted by the stench inside the abandoned house. Because, unfortunately, the solemnity of abandoned places is often ruined by the smell...

Oh, Sorry, March. I Didn't Know It Was You.

Somehow, it's March. I didn't realize this fact because when I measure weeks by my husband is home from work-- it must be Saturday, I tend to lose track of the greater scope of time. I beg your indulgence; I do know exactly how blessed I am to be able to lose track of what day it is, let alone what month. I know how abnormal and serendipitous my ability to look out the window at the snow and think pretty instead of road hazard is. So, for my part, I forgot it was March and was perfectly content to watch the ice lightly coat the trees before the snow softly enveloped the ground on Sunday.

I've been listening to everyone abuse winter for a while now--how they hate it and want it over, how they'd dance nekkid under the full moon if it meant they could bring spring early. (Okay, I haven't heard anyone say that, but I'm pretty sure they were thinking it.) Shoot the messenger if you want. (Most people enjoy shooting messengers.) For me, the snow is still sunlight's winter playground and ice still transforms the sand cherry tree into a magical plant that grows diamonds when it's cold out.

 

There's a quote at the top of this blog, just under that title. I'm relatively sure most of you haven't read it (shame on you) but go do so now. While I'm completely aware of the uniqueness of my situation, I'm still going to seize this opportunity to say that I hope you make chances, whenever and wherever you can, to enter the other worlds that are all around you.

It is so easy to forget, even in my charmed life, what the point of all the work is. We live in a time and place where we're not desperately chasing our day-to-day survival. Yet we have bills to pay, and sometimes it seems like that's all we accomplish. Sometimes it seems like there's never any room to breathe, never anything left over after the bills are payed. I get that. I feel that, too. Joe Walsh, singer and sage, said, "I can't complain, but sometimes I still do." I confess, that is me. 

But then days like Sunday happen. God coats the trees in tiny, temporary diamonds. He scatters rainbows around like confetti when the light hits the snow flakes just so here and there. I walk into the woods just across the road and it seems like a place I haven't been before. Even the cold tensing my facial muscles seems to be telling me to smile. I breathe deeper, and more freely. It ceases to matter that I can't afford to go have a shrimp dinner at O'Charley's, or that I have to think twice or three times before spending twenty bucks on a new pair of jeans. I can even forget that I have cars to feed, repair, and insure, which are always alternately making believe they are boat anchors waiting to be put to sea. I'm surrounded by clean air, thaumaturgic newness, and my sons, and I think This is the point of all the hours spent on laundry or cleaning or chores or scheming ways to save a buck or commuting or at work an hour and a half away. Not so we can afford something or other, but this. This.

This.