A short story

Last winter I helped clear out old Ernie’s shed.

Off to a nursing home, his thoughtful neighbours readied his house for auction. One contacted me.

Ernie kept everything. He’s 88, born in the clasp of the Great Depression, of a generation that knew of hard times, want, need, thrift.

One of the things Ernie kept was nails. Boxes, tins, jars of them, some bent, others rusty and used - every nail respected for its possibilities.
Today I used a good handful of Ernie’s old nails, building a creative fence for a ‘forest school’ at Elsternwick Primary.
I thought of him as I selected carefully each one.
Ernie didn’t find a use for the nails, but maybe he was keeping them for someone like me.

Nobody will ever know, but old Ernie’s conservation has now touched school children for many years to come.
It is how a community works.
A fence is being built in the spirit of Ernie.
He is not forgotten, not by me.

If any others have sheds that need clearing out - have things that need another home, that need respecting and honouring, you know how to find me.

Bless you Ernie!

Can you help?

Materials are sourced from building demolitions, skips, from the back sheds and yards of friends doing clean outs, from dumped rubbish.

We call this ‘bowerbirding’.

We also gratefully accept donations, including:

• Milled timber, especially structural timber, deck boards, floorboards. Good quality plywood. No timber with paint can be accepted.

• Old taps, especially brass ones, and old pipes, especially copper.

• Clean late 19th century bricks, especially shaped ones.

• Vintage gardening tools, terracotta pots, planter tubs.

• Any collections of nails, screws, bolts, metal brackets, etc that might otherwise be tossed.

• Any hand tools (currently in need of clamps!) or power tools that are no longer needed.

• Well-out-of-date cooking oils (can be rubbed on timber to preserve) or tubs of leftover decking oils or timber varnishes.

• Leftover tins of white paint or primer paint, or bright coloured paint, or paint for metal surfaces, and mineral turpentine, etc.

• Old wooden toys.

• Excess sand, aggregate, bags of cement, etc

• Outdoor objects you think might be useful and loved in a school or kindergarten, or a private setting.

Things we cannot use include glass (although we do use old windows in timber frames in green houses and private sheds and studios), indoor tiles (unless they are exceptionally original in design), railway sleepers (risk of asbestos dust from train break pads), tyres, particle board, etc.

We’re also in keen need of storage space, hopefully for peppercorn rent! Have a spare spot of land to lend us, somewhere near Armadale? If you do, we’d love you forever.

If you think you can help the upcycling-environmental spirit of Bowerbird Gardens, best to take a pic of the material and send as a text (0425 005 531) and we can talk.

Many thanks!