Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Spring Flowers

We have some pretty spring flowers blooming in our yard:
lillies, yesterday-today-tommorow,
azeleas, and kalanchoe.

I made a rolling laundry basket!

We live in a beautiful place. We have a spring fed pond in our front yard and the Wekiva State Park is in our backyard. The woods offer privacy, complete with chirping birds, curious squirrels, Bambi, Thumper, and Yogi - who thankfully limits visits to plundering the trash at night. The pond makes evenings wonderful, and we fall asleep to noisy frog songs at night. Our house is pretty nice, but the true reason we chose it was because of the setting. I am so glad that Florida now prohibits neighborhoods like mine from disallowing clotheslines, as they are now considered an "energy device using renewable resources".

Hanging clothes on the outside clothesline is my joy. Mark and I installed a nice 4-lined/T-framed clothes drying kit from Home Depot, but with my arthritis, carrying a heavy basket full of wet clothes from laundry room to the clothesline was prohibitive.

I wanted a rolling laundry cart like Aunt Louise used when I was a young girl. It was aluminum framed with wheels, and a cloth hammock to hold the clothes, and it folded closed for storage. Too bad, none were available in town or online. I drew some plans, purchased PVC, special glue, wheels, aluminum dowels for axles, a long threaded stick for the crossbars, and all the hardware. Our neighbor TJ has every sort of electric saw and drill that Sears has ever sold, and he was more than willing to do the cutting and drilling for me. After the frame was complete, I bought a yard of fabric for outdoor furniture, and created the cloth basket. The finished product saves me from carrying a heavy basket, and also saves me from having to lean to the ground to get the clothes to hang. I even made a clothespin bag on the side. It wasn't cheap to create, but I will have it forever. What do you think?