Day three, I gave away a brick bolster. Yeah, I didn’t know what one of those was either. I’m working on de-paving part of my back-yard with the ultimate goal of creating a forest garden where now there is only concrete. Last weekend, Mike and I set up a small pond in the garden and we needed some pieces of stone to cover the edges of the pond liner. Not having a car means that when we need something like stones, we look around for what we’ve got at home instead of driving off to the garden centre.
We’ve got plenty of patio slabs, but at 2 feet square, they just wouldn’t work as edging for a pond that’s only 2 feet across. The internet seemed to tell us that with a hammer and brick bolster, a person could easily carve patio stones into smaller pieces. I have trouble being patient, especially when I’ve got a project on the go, so rather than trying out other ways of breaking concrete, I rushed out and bought the bolster, we have a tool shop 5 minutes walk away.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you not to believe everything on the internet. While the bolster probably works well with bricks, it barely dented the concrete slabs. Mike ended up dropping the patio stones from a few feet up, which created random smaller pieces, which we managed to jigsaw into a passable edging. However, we were left with another useless tool taking up room in our tiny toolbox. So today I gave away the brick bolster to the Edinburgh Tool Library, which opened up just two months ago. Now the brick bolster can be used for free by the many members of ETL and by donating a tool to the library I’ve become a member myself, with free access to an inventory of over 130 tools. All part of moving the story from one of consuming to one of sharing.
Restorying the Earth 
Lovely pond Alette! I like the image of Mike dropping patio stones to break them, and the brick bolster just sulking in the corner. We are planning a pond too…rocks not in short supply in this neighbourhood, we just dig. I’m hoping for frogs and pickerel weed to show up.
Our garden is on a frog highway between two well established ponds in gardens on either side of ours, so I’m hopefully some will decide to stay. However, the neighbour’s cat is fond of frog hunts, so I’m not sure how many frogs are still around.