The colour purple

 

Where is my new purple lidded recycling bin? I know that I am not forgotten because I keep getting emails to say it is arriving. I applied before April this year and am in Phase 1 so it should arrive soon.  Cans, glass and plastic all go in together so it will be easier. My relatives in Yorkshire already have one for this mixed recycling. There it is a blue bin, so I am hoping to catch up with them soon with my flashy purple one.

On this subject of wheelie bins (which gets more interesting as you get older) I cannot help wondering why the councils across the country did not agree on the same sensible colours. Here, brown seems to be the colour for garden waste (this is called the green bin). The green coloured bin is for landfill and so is not green in the recycling sense, the council call this one black.

There is no mistaking our purple blackberries though. They are ready and coming thick and fast. I pick a tub full every day for freezing; we will be glad of them in the winter and we cannot possibly eat them all now. The downside of this picking is that my hands and nails stain and it looks as if I have not washed. When I was a young girl, we all had to go blackberrying and pick the wild berries from the hedgerows. We were taught not to eat any as we filled our enamel pint mugs. You had to put your tongue out to show your parents when you got back to prove that it was not stained and so you had not had any in your mouth.

Our little hen has no such worries about what she eats. She tries everything in the garden including slug pellets which she devours eagerly. They are the pellets that are not harmful to wildlife (other than slugs) but even so it is alarming to see her gobbling so many.

Our hen is called Speckles for obvious reasons, she is black with white specks we have had her for years and she occasionally lays us an egg (which I avoid after the slug pellet gorging in case of tainting).

When lockdown began, we also had a little white hen with black specks and the two kept each other company and kept us in eggs. But the white hen died and our remaining Speckles does not like being alone and if we let her out she follows us wherever we go in the garden. We feed her leftovers which is a very good way of recycling kitchen waste without a plastic bin.

(Taken from my column in the Shropshire Star)