Make Sofas Comfortable Again (By Stuffing Them With Ecobricks)

I'll have to be honest: I'm disappointed with my bean bag sofas.  When I moved into my unfurnished flat, they seemed like the perfect solution: cheap, malleable and comfortable.  They are the first two, but surprisingly enough, not the third.  Over time, they've become saggy and un-supportive.  Not the place to sprawl out for hours with a book or a bit too much Star Trek.  The "beans" supplied with the original purchase, squash down and somehow, despite the design (compartmentalised arms and seating parts) the whole edifice becomes pathetic.  "Refills" are available but who knows where from and how these monstrous polymers come to be?  Not recommended for the ecologically minded.  By which I mean, not recommended at all.

And besides, I already have my own solution: shove them full of plastic waste.  This has been a satisfactory solution, but not a perfect one - for one thing, it erodes the incentive not to purchase plastic in the first place.  This is probably stupid, since the fact that I'm not going to throw the plastic away doesn't mean it won't eventually be thrown away, and doesn't stop it from being manufactured in the first place.  (Supply and demand.  Yuck).  For another, it's subject to the same flattening problem as the beans: shapeless and screwy, it all just gets squashed by the weight of time, entropy, and most of all, my arse.

Then, only yesterday, it occurred to me: why not shove some ecobricks in there too?  It's perfect.  Ecobricks hold their shape.  So I started to cram some in there, packing the softer plastic, beans and other scraps already in there around them.

Full of beans.

I found I could fit four, end to end, along the back end of the larger of my two sofas, and a couple in each arm. The next set I make can go into the very bottom, eliminating any further sagginess (sometimes a sofa, filled only with the original beans, gets so saggy you're virtually sitting on the floor).

Also included: previously worn trousers

You see, making #ecobricks is harder than you might expect.  It isn't stuffing plastic bottles full of plastic - well, it is, but there's some technique required.  A 2-litre plastic bottle is supposed to weigh at least 660 grams once made into an ecobrick, but I've barely been able to make one heavier than 400g.  (Visit https://www.ecobricks.org/how/ for tips on how to avoid this kind of failure).  That's because you want them dense and sturdy enough if you're actually going to build anything out of them.

But inside of a sofa, none of that matters.  You don't want a dense and sturdy sofa.  You don't want a shapeless sofa either, which let's be frank, is what a bean bag sofa really is.  You want something in between.  And so: inadequate eco-bricks are the ideal solution.  I was considering removing all the plastic from my failed attempts and starting all over again, cramming them back up to the appropriate weight, but now there's no need, which is a relief.  (The amount of plastic you can actually cram into one if you really put the work in, is quite remarkable, too, but does take time).  It means I can shove all my failed attempts into my sofa, enjoy a more comfortable sitting experience, and start the next batch with something much more solid in mind.

Related posts

Landfill/Sofa

My #ZeroWaste 2019 So Far

Sitting on a Landfill (Waiting for the End to Come)

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Wild Garlic Experiments

Identification

"Wild garlic", otherwise known as "ramsons" for some reason, grows abundantly in shady woodland areas and by roadsides all over this part of the world.  I found some on my first walk into the woods past Clarence Park I've taken in a while and helped myself.

Like apparently everything you can forage to eat, it closely resembles other things that would put you on the wrong side of dead if you did the same to them, which just seems to be the way it is, so do be careful if you're doing any foraging of your own (which you should be, because it's great).  Fortunately, garlic has the advantage of being more easily identifiable than some wild plants: if you're in any real doubt, the deciding factor is its taste.  The leaves of "Lily of the Valley" look a lot like the leaves of wild garlic, but taste nothing like it.  Wild garlic, as you may have guessed, tastes a lot like garlic.  All parts of the plant do, in fact, and it is entirely edible - from the leaves to the stems to the flowers, right down to the bulbs.  Another thing to look for is the flowers: wild garlic flowers are small and pointy:

Wild garlic, photographed in Bury, Lancashire, 19th May 2019

while Lily of the Valley flowers are round and droopy:

Lilly of the Valley flowers, from this page.

Just to be on the safe side, I'd suggest waiting until the plant flowers to be 100% sure of what it is, if you don't want to risk putting poisonous leaves in your mouth.  Which is great, because that makes now the perfect time of year to nab yourself an abundance of free, smelly and nutritious food.   Go for it.

Experiment 1: Fermenting Wild Garlic

I love pickled vegetables, but making them can be a bit of a faff.  Fermenting, however, seems to be a lot more straightforward.  No sterilising of jars required, and no heating of spicy vinegar concoctions.  Fermenting wild garlic needs only time, and salt.  I followed the recipe you can read about here and here, and as demonstrated in this lovely video here.  Simple as can be: salt, leaves, salt, leaves in layers; leave to go mushy and give it a "massage".  I left mine salted for a good hour before mushing, and weighed down overnight in the jar before sealing the lid.  

View this post on Instagram

Fermenting wild garlic. Tastes a lot nicer than it looks, probably. #wildgarlic #foodforfree #foraging

A post shared by J. Bradshaw (@apossibleworld) on May 20, 2019 at 6:44am PDT

And there we have it: my first jar of fermenting wild garlic.  If it tastes anything like the leftover salty strips I couldn't cram in there do, it's going to be quite the act of willpower waiting the recommended two weeks of actual fermentation time before eating.  This was just an experimental jar: assuming success, there'll be plenty more, and larger jars, where that came from.

Experiment 2: Growing Wild Garlic on the Allotment

Wild garlic grows as bulbs, resembling spring onions or leeks as much as the garlic you can buy in supermarkets (no surprise there - all these plants belong to the allium genus).  This makes them fairly easy to pull out of the ground if you give them a sharp tug as close to the ground as possible: and so it occurred to me, why not try growing some on the allotment?  There's a patch where a rose I planted hasn't bloomed anything like as much as its sister I planted just a foot or so away, just close to the gate where I'm wondering if the difference in the amount of direct sunlight the two are getting has sealed their separate fates.  I keep reading how garlic and roses make excellent companion plants, and as I've already grown the two in close proximity this year, I've no reason to doubt this.  If "normal" garlic grows well with roses, then why not wild garlic too?  And the shady habitat I nabbed them from can be replaced by the shade of the fence where the rose has had less success.  Seems like a winner to me.  So I removed the tiny rose bush...

...filled in the hole with some fresh compost, and planted the bulbs, roots still attached, in its place:

Perhaps these won't take, or perhaps they will: but if they don't, perhaps the dropping white flowers will re-seed and I'll have a healthy patch of ramsons this time next year.  In the meantime, I'll be fermenting.

Related posts

A Walk in the Park
A Soup Made of Scraps
The Decline and Fall of Clarence Park's Sensory Garden

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Imaginary Forest Library

Here's something I've been thinking about recently.  It's a place I think probably doesn't exist, but once I've told you about I'm confident you'll agree that it should.  Must, dare I say it.  It must exist.

It's a library that's also a forest.  It's a forest that's also a library.  This is its defining characteristic: it is both forest and library, as much one as the other.  It's not a library in a forest, and it's not a forest with a library in it.  It's a forest library.  It's a library forest.  A symbiotic relationship.  That's important.

Google image search doesn't help much, which is what leads me to believe what I have in mind doesn't exist.

This kid is on the right lines...

...but here's the thing.  The forest library is a permanent arrangement.  Those books are just going to get drenched as soon as it rains.  The forest library protects its contents from the rain.  Not entirely, as an actual indoor library does, but sufficiently.  Picture this:

And this:

Or this:

And this:

And, to a lesser but not insignificant degree, this:

Hopefully you're starting to get the idea.  What I have in mind is a huge, outdoor, tree-filled space that is also filled with books.  It's exactly the sort of thing I'd build if I had silly amounts of money, which of course I do not.  (By the way, if you haven't already, now might just be the perfect time to get yourself some Bitcoin).

The library forest has thousands and thousands of books.  Books built into trees.  Trees growing into and around piles of books.  Some of the books are a little damp and musty; some are home to a layer of moss, others may sprouting mushrooms.  Likewise for the shelves they rest on, and that's all perfectly fine.

Some books are way high up in the canopies of ancient trees, so that you have to climb to reach them.  When you do, you'll find a branch strong enough for you sit on, high above the ground, reading.

Other books might be found in little alcoves or caves.  Every cranny and nook will be contain some literary treasure or other.  It will be a magical place.

It will also be a public place.  You can spend the day there, or even camp there overnight.  It would be a happy place, welcoming and peaceful, stimulating.  It's the sort of place there should be at least one of in the world, and as far as I can tell, to the scale that I am imagining, there isn't one.  And that's very sad.

Related posts

Future Food
Northern Forest
Give and Take
Why Isn't Everything Beautiful?
Plant Trees by Searching


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Please consider disabling your adblockers when reading this site.  I make every effort to ensure no inappropriate, rubbish or offensive advertising appears here, and nothing that is contrary to the spirit of this blog.  So it's really nothing to be afraid of.  Cheers.