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| Photo from a few days ago |
Do you recognise this object (the long red one)? And if you do, what do you call it? (Really, finding the correct names for various household objects and tools in English - and what's BE vs AE - is among my worst "blogging jobs"...) One suggestion seems to be "grabber/reacher aid". Anyway, I got this one, and also a shorter one, a long time ago, in connection with other physical problems; and still find them useful in many situations. I hesitate to use them for "dirty" jobs, though. But today I got inspired to put a plastic glove on this one - and with that solution, was able to use it to pick up wet plant leaves from the balcony floor without having to bend myself too much...
It's been raining a lot lately, and it still doesn't feel like a good idea to try to exercise my injured knee outdoors for very long at a time. This morning I decided to put what little energy I had into another project instead: Getting rid of the last two plants still standing out on my balcony floor - two rubber plants, almost as tall as the railing, and by now half-withered and no longer in a condition that made me want to take them inside. (I have one healthy plant of the same origin indoors already - plus a cutting - and that's quite enough...)
The indoors rubber plant
The
big leaves on the outdoors plants were dripping wet, the pots heavy with rainwater, the stems
too thick and tough for my secateurs to just easily "snip"; and I needed
three plastic garbage bags (of normal "kitchen" size) to pack the
remains in. (All while still having to "think" about every movement and
position.) I managed to get it done, though - and then put the plastics
bags in bigger paper carrier bag, and then used the wheels belonging to a
shopping caddy to get that down in the lift (elevator) and out to bins
at the corner of my building... (And then there were the pots to clean... But I got that done as well, a bit later.)
I suspect that this year may have been the last time I tried to have any live plants bigger than a few geraniums (each in its own small pot, easy to take in/out) on the balcony.
What a job! I would have come back home comatose. Yes, I do have one of these; I call it a grabber. The glove is a good idea!!
ReplyDeleteGinny, the point of this exercise (apart from getting the job done!), was that I did not have to leave home in the first place. I knew I could pause (or even just stop and leave the rest to some other day) whenever. Going for a walk, on the other hand, one can't. So I prefer to test my ability to "be on my feet" for a while at home before trying it outdoors...
DeleteI agree about small plants. At this point I'm sad that I will just let a couple die outside whenever it freezes, just too heavy to move inside, and no place to put them either. Grabber is what I call it, and you are so clever to use it!
ReplyDelete