It doesn't take much to make me happy

A friend of mine is pretty wonderful about finding opportunities to recycle things (actually, I have a whole group of friends in that category, and they are known as Master Composter/Recyclers). Said friend saw an opportunity in the straw bales the City uses at tobogganing hills to prevent tobogganers from crashing into trees and crossing into each others' paths. So he had the City gather and leave a bin of bales in a City park for anyone who might want them -- namely, gardeners like me.

I told Lee about the bales being available, and he was raring to go find them -- threw a sheet of plastic in the back of our Hyundai, and off we went. Unfortunately, we ended up at the wrong park, but the City employees we talked to there told us that if we could find any leftover bales on any tobogganing hills, we could take them.

So that's exactly what we did -- we live close to the Edmonton Ski Club which is right next to Gallagher hill, a famous tobogganing area in our neck of the woods (Rick Mercer rode a concrete toboggan down it once, video below). We drove over to a power pole surrounded by bales, threw three into the back of our vehicle, and went home happy. I was triply happy because 1) I have always wanted to get my hands on some straw for under my strawberry plants 2) I'm glad to make use of something that was only going to the City composter, and 3) it was fun to "steal" bales and look like crazies to the people on the hill at the time. As we drove away, we joked about them taking our license plate numbers and calling the police.

Today's task? Spreading those three happy-making bales around my garden. And if I don't have enough straw, there might still be a few bales left at Gallagher Hill for me to collect.

For those of you who have never seen a concrete toboggan, here's the Rick Mercer video from 5 years ago... fun and games!