In article , "Fran"
wrote:

"paghat" wrote in message
In article "Fran" wrote:

[clips]

I've grown spuds in tyres and I live in a house that friends who live in
the
city think is quite posh.
So how often do you encounter this sort of thing? Or more to the point,
why
do you live in an area with such slummy places or go to such slummy
places?

Hey, YOU'RE the one who lives where it's "posh" to stack used tires in
your front yard.

You aren't reading what I wrote. I don't live where it is "posh" to grow
spuds in tyres. I live in a house which others have described as "posh". I
also happen to have grown potatoes in tyre stacks.

I don't put these tyre stacks in my front yard. The previous poster did not
mention growing spuds in tyres in his front yard either.

You are the one that assumes that anyone who DOES grow spuds in tyres is a
"trashoid".

And you've reinforced the truth of it. When you said you "hide" the tires
with other plants (such as rubarb, I'm sure that's a year-round disguise
of a wondrous sort) you pretty much admitted even you can tell that a
stack of tires in the yard still looks like garbage & needs to be hidden.
So you lack sufficient aesthetic to care; I'm not saying people SHOULDN'T
live like that, I'm just saying it takes trashoids to do so. But when I
make a planter, or a trellis, or any garden ornamentation, it doesn't need
to be hidden; if it slowly does vanish behind vines or shrubs, it wasn't
because it was butt-ugly & needed hiding. As you said "spuds don't care
where they grow" -- they certainly don't grow better because someone put
them inside some trashy tires. Get the trash out of the yard & the plants
will do just as well. Did you know old tires can leech enough zinc to kill
some plants? Used tires are an enormous hazard to the environment -- but
stacking them up in the gardens is not the answer to that problem.

Spuds don't care where they grow

The garbage dump wouldn't mind a few spuds either, or even some toxic
waste for that matter!

That comment is simply adding hysteria to stereotyping.

Just in case you aren't aware of it, many tips (or dumps) around the world
are now becoming very well cared for and have permananet tip attendants.
These tip attendants often shred garden waste dumped in the tip and then
compost it and either resell it to keen gardeners who know the value of
recycling green waste or reuse it on beautification schemes in the dump.

I know a great deal about recycling, but if you think keeping piles of
tires in the yard is comparable to municiple composts, then there's just
no easy communication between the earth I'm living on & your Tireland
residence on Alpha Centauri.

No one is compelling you to recycle anything but there is simply no call to
leap to the worst possible scenario simply because someone does try to make
use of discarded items.

Keeping garbage in your yard is NOT recycling -- no more than tossing
whiskey & beer bottles out your back window means they're "recycled" into
a lovely pile that bindweed can "hide" for a couple months out of the
year. Our household uses as little as possible of anything that even needs
to be thrown out or recycled by any means other than our own compost -- so
in our case we don't have the city cart off very much (our weekly garbage
pick-up is rarely more than a third full can, sometimes entirely empty, &
it's mildly annoying that those of us who DO NOT GENERATE much garbage
have to pay the same rates as people who cram their cans full every week,
most of it for a landfill). If you care about the environment, give up
your car & whatever else generates huge amounts of difficult-to-recycle
waste, but don't convince yourself that leaving parts of your car in the
garden & trying to hide it with rhubarb is ecofriendly. Eco is not spelled
u-g-l-y.

They do not become your "trashoids" simply because
they have discovered a good method to use for growing something in a tight
space. The trashoids are in your mind.

A couple things are just not rationally deniable, such as anyone who lines
up "fancy" whiskey bottles of colored water in their window sills as
"decorations," or uses tires for planters in their garden, really are
going to be trash, even if most won't be able to know they're trash (or
they wouldn't've mistaken old tires for a garden decorations to begin
with). Some few are proud to be trash & good for them; if one's life is a
living satire & that person knows it, that's just about admirable. But for
most, the only question about the matter would be whether or not they are
even MORE pathetic by having painted their garbagy tires white to
"improve" the look. As well to stick little cocktail umbrellas in the
dog's turds never cleaned out of the lawn, to make those nice yard
decorations too. The only possible exception would be a garden
intentionally automobile oriented. I visited a garden decorated with
vintage gasoline pumps with lovely winding paths amidst beautiful shrubs.
Being aesethetic people they did NOT include tire planters nor even rusty
cars up on blocks -- but I could imagine how tires MIGHT have been used
in that context (in a satiric manner at least) given their collection of
gas-station kitsch & the gorgeous old gasoline pumps.

-paggers

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/