Sunday, March 9, 2008

From the back alleys of chance...

Today is a special day. Not only are we blogging for the very first time, but the Tucson Organic Gardeners' plant sale coincided with Brush and Bulky day in the very same neighborhood! So we bought some plants (Bottle Gourd for Kristin's container garden -very "in" and urban friendly- and a Patty Pan Squash for Debbie's backyard garden). It felt simply delightful to be wandering in the 75 degree weather among beds of rainbow chard and red cabbage, children perched on chairs getting their faces painted, and a pollinators bean bag toss. There were local water harvesting experts in dorky hats behind their information tables, homemade posters describing desert composting techniques, and grass-fed beef sizzling in burger-form on the grill. Even Debbie, the vegetarian, was salivating.

We arrived at the plant sale slightly late. Most of the plants had been picked over by the early birds, and we were slightly disappointed by our luck. But, as Kristin pointed out, we still had Brush and Bulky to look forward to...

And now, for non-Tucsonans, the importance of Brush and Bulky. This is the day for each neighborhood when you can leave large unwanted crap on your curbside or ally and the city will collect it. For scavengers it can be a great opportunity to find broken furniture, window frames, rotting couches....

Confession: Kristin and Debbie cannot pass up a Brush and Bulky filled ally without a good drive by.

We had a couple quick scores: a tomato cage, the side of an old red bench, a plastic chair for Debbie's backyard and some eroding furniture, which we sadly passed up for lack of storage space (someday...).

After driving past ranch-style house after ranch-style house and curbsides piled high with cactus guts, wooden pallets, broken chairs, buckets of nails, etc, the real score came as we drove down yet another unsuspecting suburban street. On the other side of a beat-up Suburban selling for $950, Debbie spotted something a wonderful shade of purple.

"Beautiful purple dresser! Beautiful purple dresser! Kristin pull over!"

And Kristin did.

Behold the purple dresser, interesting in color, yet more attractive from inside the car. We got out anyways to take a look. The back was kind of falling off. The general state of the dresser was "shaky"to say the least.. it was almost such a great find. We consoled each other. It wouldn't have fit inside Kristin's car anyways. But, like all good trash pickers and furniture scavengers, we gave it a good inspection none-the-less before leaving it for the Brush and Bulky people.

Kristin opened the middle drawer. Debbie took the one on the right. Empty you ask? If you call someone's entire ancient (but well-used) VHS tape collection "empty".

We took one quick glance at a few of the titles and proceeded to run back to the car in hysterics. Then we came back with the camera.

We think the pictures speak for themselves.

(the one underneath "My Dirty Little Thoughts" is entitled "Extreme Hardcore")



...until next Brush and Bulky day...

Love,

Kristin and Debbie

P.S. Welcome to our awesome blog.

7 comments:

Pam said...

What an amazing, entertaining, enlightening, and lovely blog!
I look forward to reading more of adventures and finding inspiration for my own humble abode.

francis maxwell said...

haHA! you just left the videos?!? i love this blog!

nop.bot said...

i'm confused as to

a. why someone would get rid of such a fine treasure of a vhs tape

and

b. upon discovernig his or her folly you both left it behind as well!

Sarah Updegraff and David Andrew said...

weren't you at least a little interested in what those dirty little thoughts were? I'd have been.

Unknown said...

Awesome times. I really hope other scavengers happened upon the purpled videos and enjoyed them as you did.

I want a Brush and Bulky day, dang.

Matthew said...

those sunflowers at the bottom of your blog sure are amazing...

Nancy McRay said...

Sharing a blog is a brilliant idea!
Well, just proving again how creative you two are.

Thanks for sending me the link.