Make do and mend...

Something that we have always done,  we don't  throw things out but we keep them because the day will come - eventually - that one of us says  'have you seen such and such, I could use it right now'.  Of course you have to have space for all the 'one day' items!

This week has been a mending week:  going back 10 years almost to the day,  we bought three sets of garden furniture,  each set had a square glass topped table and two chairs.  Very comfy chairs,  sort of basket weave bases, but plasticky man-made fabric that only lasted just over a year before disintegrating.  (It's the heat and sun that does it)  John made new seats from wood,  not as comfy but sturdy and long lasting.  But he only fixed  2 of the seats,  just to see how they'd be and stored the rest of the wood for finishing the other chairs later.  Later has now arrived!  But of course by now all the frames are showing their age and are going rusty,  so we have started to sand down all the frames,  he is then painting them with silver metal paint - it's what we had - and putting on the newly sanded and wood preserved slats.

The other mend this week has been the top blue pool.  It's a paddling pool, circular,  about 8 feet in diameter so holds lots of water,  and has a blow-up top ring.  We bought it back in the summer of 2007 when some friends were visiting with 3 young children and our pool/deposito wasn't finished.  Since 2008 it has been up on the top veg terrace as water storage.  Unfortunately during one of this winter's windy days some twiggy prunings blew from who knows where and landed in the pool, when I found them and fished them out there were lots of little nicks in the blow-up part.  Despite trying to find the holes,  mending 5 of them and pumping up the ring,  we realised there were more holes than we had patches for.  So the end of the pool we thought,  it can't hold water without an inflated ring, it just collapses in on itself.  But John had a brainwave.  Cans of expanding foam squirted into the ring!   And it worked!   He squirted in 4 cans this morning,  they've almost filled the entire ring and as the water was running we've filled the pool up this afternoon.   And only €3.50 a can - far, far cheaper than a replacement pool. 

And then I wondered where the phrase 'make do and mend' came from.  I guessed the 2nd world war,  which it did,  and I've found this site called Victoryliving which has all sorts of info about gardening,  recipes,  preserving and of course a make do and mend section.  So I'm  off to browse it - who knows what else we might be able to do with our 'one day' things!