Rescue Me! Recycle Week 2024

For 21 years, Recycle Week has been celebrating recycling and encouraging people to recycle as much as they can. This year's theme is 'Rescue Me' which aims to rescue recyclable items from ending up in landfill. 

If you have any items that you don't want, think first, can you re-use it? Could you:

* sell it on line? 

* donate it to a charity that would directly use the item in its work? 

* give the item to someone you know?

* donate the item to a second hand shop?

If you can't use the item in any way, and it couldn't be sold in a charity shop, then find out how it can be recycled in your local area. (Different places recycle different things in different ways, contact your local council to find out what happens in your area).

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am committed to re-using materials in the crafts I make. I buy craft supplies from second hand shops, my particular favourite being bags of unsellable jewellery, which include broken items that can be taken apart, and the pieces used to make new items. 

I'm currently clearing out the house of a close friend who died recently. It's a sad task, but I'm trying to make sure as much of her belongings get re-used as possible. I'll be writing about that in tomorrow's post on the Crafty Green Poet Substack. 

Autumn loss

 

 

early frost -

our first autumn 

without you

**

A couple of people close to me have died this year, my Dad in March and a good friend of mine a few weeks ago. So it's sad times here. 

I wrote a post about green funerals over on my Substack blog, which you can read here.

Figgate Park today

 We had a lovely short walk round Figgate Park this morning. The weather has been very changeable today with several heavy showers of rain, but we managed to time our walk to co-incide with the dry times! 

The rowan trees are beautiful just now! Different species and varieties of rowan trees have different coloured berries. I particularly like the contrast between the yellow berries and red leaves on this rowan

We made friends with this Grey Squirrel, who was particularly unafraid of us 

It was a lovely autumn walk

Thanks to Crafty Green Boyfriend, who took all the photos in this post.

In the Office

The rain has stopped.
From my desk, I watch
October sunlight play
on the white walls
of the football stadium
across the car-park.

Upstairs, someone else’s boss
moans about the weather
‘It’s raining cats and dogs
and dark as winter’.
I am my own boss
free to watch the slow movement
of sunlight across white walls
as geese fly overhead
winter on their wings.


Originally published in the seemingly now defunct Work Literary Magazine.

Rainy Season haiku

no rain

in this 'rainy season' -

silent lightning 

 **

Inspired by my time in Malawi, where the rains failed in my second autumn.

First published in The Mamba, Issue 14, the journal of the Africa Haiku Network.

 

Along the River Tyne at Haddington

Yesterday we had a lovely walk along the River Tyne at Haddington, a town in East Lothian, a short bus journey away from Edinburgh (This is a different River Tyne to the one that flows through Newcastle upon Tyne.)

We spent quite a lot of time looking at the pictorial wildflower meadow that stretches from the bridge in the photo above quite a distance along the river. There were a reasonable number of Eristalis hoverflies enjoying the flowers 

and a few Banded hoverflies (Syrphus sp) which have been very elusive so far this year

The meadow includes a nice variety of flowers including red poppies

and Wild Carrot, my favourite of the umbellifers, especially at this time of year, when it's in seed

Three Days of Scottish Summer

 We've had a really poor summer as far as weather has been concerned. However, we were lucky enough to get three days of glorious sunny weather early last week which coincided with our brief trip to Peebles in the Scottish Borders. 

You can read a wee bit more about our trip in my latest Substack post.