We moved into a big 'ol house at the end of last summer. It was, and still is a major fixer upper.
A former party house, you know the kind?
It was rented out by various landlords, no money was ever put into it. I am told it has been at least 10 years since anyone really cleaned it up here.
The yard, if one can call it that, is a half acre mass of overgrown weeds and stumps. Parts of the property were at one time landscaped with homemade rock walls, but they too have fallen into disreputable condition. We have a beautiful old apple tree, and some rosebushes that will be really nice this year because of the pruning they got.
In order to clean it out, we have discovered that we will have to really clean it out first.
There are tires all over in the underbrush, in between the trees. A broken Hashish pipe in one of the flowerbeds, oh my....., small bits of metal. Assorted parts from a van are littered all over the place.
Number one daughter has been poking around in the woods here, and she dragged out a mass of stuff a couple days ago. (with gloves, this stuff may be kinda toxic.)
An exercise bike, two mufflers, a water pump, some toys; including a fisher price pirate ship from about 1995 (googled it, and they changed the design)....Plastic, is forever yanno? With some bleach and some scrubbing there is no reason it cannot be used by the wee pixies in their backyard play area.
There is a lot more too.
What had me a little curious was what looked like an oversize PC tower. Just the plastic front, and the metal frame. But I mean, huge.
One of the tags was still on the frame, and the brand was still on the front.
WANG.
I looked it up, and found it was anOIS 50.
The OIS is a minicomputer system, the successor to Wang's word processing system that was famous in the late 1970's. Besides Wang word processing, other applications were available, as well as programming languages such as Wang BASIC, Z80 assembler, and PL/M-80. The OIS supported a wide array of peripherals including printers, workstations, telecommunications controllers, disk and tape drives, and networking interfaces (WISE) used to connect OIS systems together, as well as VS systems.
Built between 1980, and 1990, and residing quite literally in the rainforests of British Columbia, Canada.
But all of of this junk has just made me reflect on The massive amounts of crap that we have dumped, and continue to dump all over the world for future and current generations.
My little corner of the world has been left as a mess for future generations, (us) to clean up in much the same way.
Mountains of Fridges, Eternal tire fires, discarded computer and electronic equipment.....Many companies offer recycling services, but is that always where stuff that well meaning consumers give to them, really goes?
The plastic oceans, now forever part of the food chain. This has been covered here on kos.
I wrote a diary a couple years ago, She's dead, wrapped in plastic.
A sea of plastic. As the large pieces move around in the currents, they break down into smaller pieces, the small pieces are ingested by marine life and birds. The Nurdles are eaten instantly.
Skeletal remains of birds have been discovered with their stomach contents still intact; lids, caps and other assorted plastic man made flotsam.
It has now entered the food chain, and now its also in you.
In our haste to be so very modern, and to have our so very convenient lifestyles, we forgot one basic simple rule that is pertinent to everything in the Universe.
Nothing ever truly disappears. It only changes form.
What are we going to do with all of this stuff? Well, we will take some of it to our local landfill. We will recycle what we can. We will reuse what we can.
Some use tires to grow potatoes I hear, but I doubt that they are good for growing any kind of food. We may use some for flowerplanters. Maybe a swing or two?
There is also a steering wheel in the woods, a big white one. That may become part of the playarea for the wee pixies too. A pretend car or a boat?
Who the heck knows what else we will find?
Getting creative with what we have is something that we find kinda fun. And cheap.
Here is a picture of the youngest member of the family, (she is 2) doing some archaeology on her own.....She prefers to find bugs though. :)