Recycled Water Feature


I had a bit of a narrow squeak recently.

I was doing a general tidy of the borders in the garden. You know, weeding, which is quite satisfying because you see such instant results. Trimming back some of the winter deadness. Secateurs. Sunshine. My floral bucket. All good.

Then I cut through a woody bit that turned out not to be a woody bit but the electric cable to our water feature. Goodness knows how I wasn’t electrocuted.

Silly thing was that it bubbled for a second or two more and I thought I’d somehow got away with it, even though I had the two ends in opposite hands!

A lucky escape

So I switched it off at the socket and confessed to Mr F.Ed. Then we started to browse online for a new one.

We got an identical one from a local garden store, but this time solar powered.

That turned out to be amazingly frustrating because with every blink of cloud it would stop. On off on off on off. The birds used to like bathing in the top bowl of the old one but with this one, they didn’t know whether they were coming or going.

So Mr F.Ed has cannibalised the old one to fit the motor into the new one and it runs on mains power again. I know – clever. Just don’t ask me how. I’ve no idea.

Recycling in the garden

So that left us with the old base.

Mr F.Ed got busy again and he’s recycled it into a pretty planter. Potting compost in all three bowls, with a little piece of slate to block off the spouts in the top and middle ones.

He’s planted a fuchsia in the top bowl, a marigold in the middle one, and two nicotianas in the bottom one. It looks a picture already and once they bush up it’ll be even better.

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Shirley Blair

Fiction Ed Shirley’s been with the “Friend” since 2007 and calls it her dream job because she gets to read fiction all day every day. Hobbies? Well, that would be reading! She also enjoys writing fiction when she has time, long walks, travel, and watching Scandi thrillers on TV.