Getting Crafty in the Garden

Dear Liza,

I love living with clever people! Auntie Bridgett and Grandpa Nelson are always coming up with nifty ideas that make life more fun or interesting.

For example, it was Grandpa Nelson’s idea that we get the allotment plot in the Blair Community Garden up the street. This has set off all sorts of things. Deciding what to plant, and when it should go in, were the first questions. For this, there are experts at the nursery or on websites. How to get supplies from the nursery to the garden? For this, there is the hardware store which carries cool folding wagons.

But for this next cool thing, an artist was needed. I was cleaning out some old mosaic supplies that I won’t be using. They take up a lot of space and mosaics make a real mess, which we really don’t have space for. In the box with the other mosaic supplies was a whole bunch of old Scrabble tiles and racks from a long ago garage sale.

.Auntie Bridgett asked me to set them aside for her, so they were on the table when we sat down to lunch. As we ate, she pulled out the tiles and started spelling out words. “Basil”. “Squash”. Since there wasn’t a full set, she made allowances for spelling. “Cuxe”.

Then she turned the racks upside down and laid the tiles on the flat side. “You’ll need chopsticks to make them long enough,” she decided.

“Can I borrow your hot glue gun?” I asked.

And half an hour later, my problem of how to label my veggie rows was solved, and the garden got a lot craftier. My new labels just need a good coat of varnish to protect them from our Oregon sunshine! Ain’t Art wonderful?

Love,

Grandma Judy