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Frugal Gardening

Free Tree! Kind of a funny story

18 years ago

My parents' landlord was cutting down tree's. My dad decided to use the wood for fence posts for a temporary fence. He shaved a point into the small trunk and stuck it in the ground, used a horseshoe nail to run some wire through it.

Fast forward a year later.. there are branches coming from the ground with leaves on them. The silly tree took root and was growing.. upside down...

lol.. I thought it was pretty cool.

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Comments (5)

mrsgeekboy
18 years ago
I got a free 8-foot ficus tree last year, but it's more of a pathetic story.

Our neighbor at the time was driving his van in downtown Cincinnati when he saw city workers changing out some large planters to a more fall-like theme. He asked what they were going to do with the ficus trees they were removing. They were going to throw them out!! They were all huge and gorgeous. The workers said he could have as many as he could fit in his van, which turned out to be six.

He let us have one since they were free to him. Unfortunately, our cat (who was small kitten when we got the tree) really likes it, so we're hoping it makes it until we can move it outside in a few weeks! LOL. I shudder to think what other stuff the city has thrown away. I wish I could be there to rescue them!
chuckr30
18 years ago
Interesting. My dad's cats love to climb their indoor ficus trees also.
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Been a while since I checked this forum but this thread reminded me of how I saved a marriage. In 2002 friends of mine moved from Illinois to Florida. The home they built in FL was ready but the home in IL was still on the market. SO they moved anyway hoping the IL house would sell quicly. Most of their posessions were moved but some furniture was left in the old house for staging. Months later the house sold and the husband flew back to IL to pack up and move what was left. The small U-Haul he rented was not quite big enough so he weeded out what he thought was unimportant (basement furniture, odd pieces in the garage, etc.). The day after he put those items out on the curb, I went by on trash day doing my weekly "Pearl diving" (my kids call it garbage picking). I took home a square game table about 20" square with a swivel top. Needed to be refinshed and I was in the process of packing for a move to Florida so I put it in my basement. That table made it to Florida in 2003 and then moved back to IL in 2005 when I moved back. Never did get it refinished. Anyway - was talking to the guy who threw it out ( we all remained friends thru the years and emailed each other regularly) and he was telling me that he and his wife were having marital problems since their move from IL. He said she had never forgiven him for throwing out her Aunt's table - it was the only thing she had to remember her favorite Aunt. Well guess who had that table? I had the extreme pleasure of telling him that I had it and he could pick it up on his next visit back to IL. You would have thought I pulled him from a burning building - which I guess is what he felt like. Needless to say he made the trip to IL in record time and table is safely back in his home. Neat story huh?
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HennieTx
18 years ago
Years ago I worked for one of those plant companies that keeps the plants in the nice containers inside banks, malls, hospitals, offices, airports, etc. We would change out the 'color' (blooming) plants every few weeks, and the 'green' plants every few months unless they got ratty. Most of them? Thrown away. We were not supposed to take them home or give them to anyone; they had to go in the dumpster back at our main office. I admit I ended up swiping quite a few myself, yes I admit it. Got one of those yellow kalanchoes years ago when they first came out; we now have scads of them throughout the family. There was an office of what was obviously mafia, who wanted to maintain a 'front'; we were seldom ever able to get into their offices to water, so the plants were all changed out every few weeks. I got a few beautiful ficus trees and a fishtail palm that way. Often, in the malls, we would find empty spots in the islands where people would just walk off with plants, especially the bromiliads.
bruggirl
18 years ago
It amazes me what people throw away. At the garden center alone, I've gotten a rose bush, a bougainvillea, a large corn plant, a tray of mums, an avocado tree, a heavenly bamboo, three orchids, and lots of cuttings and annuals that are doing well so far. All stuff that was being tossed.

I've gotten lots of stuff off of trash piles on yard waste days.
chazparas
18 years ago
This past fall visiting a quaint port town I noticed that the stores emptied all their window boxes into a compost pile in the town main parking lot. It was full of various perenial plants. I loaded up on pigsqueak (14 of them) for a shady area of my garden, all bloomed early spring for me and the neighbors wanted to know were I bought my beautiful plants. I would have taken more but DH was mortified that I was picking trash in the daylight! Rich people and city/town planters gotta love them for their trash! LOL

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