Sunday, March 05, 2006

Plan drawers

I'm sorry to have been neglecting my blogging duties but the imperatives of harvest have been absorbing a lot of time since my homecoming. This weekend I have harvested and/or preserved a large crate of basil (into pesto), a small crate of blackboy peaches, a bucket of capsicums and a litre or two of tomato sauce.

And in between that we've been moving furniture around to make room for the plan drawers I bought over a month ago from a guy who is shifting to South Africa. The drawers have been making very slow and laborious progress from the trailer to the back porch to the hallway and finally today into my studio, displacing the big wooden wardrobe which in turn displaced the big wooden chest of drawers in the bedroom.

I had some fantasy of painting the drawers before installing them but that just hasn't been practical. It might yet happen but in the meantime they are pig ugly: institutional grey enamel which has been variously attacked with strips of cellotape, rust, and since coming into my possession a sander and rust treatment stuff (that was when I still harboured illusions that painting them was going to happen soon).

But I didn't buy the drawers to be beautiful (if I wanted beautiful I would have held out for wooden drawers). I bought them to keep my paper flat and safe and tidy. Since the wonderful gift of lots of paper and card from Eleanor my precarious approach to paper storage under the bed- always somewhat dodgey- has become untenable. The stack now reaches to the bed base and pulling the pile out and sorting through to find what I want has moved from high risk to inevitable damage. The ugly drawers will do the necessary job of keeping them safe and tidy and sorted. And right now that's all that really matters.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Meliors 'pig ugly' NAH. Pigs are mostly gorgeous and handsome, amazingly clean if 'ugly people' will let them be... they're also great to hug and in the intellect department they're 'clever as' and their sense of humour is sublime.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Al that pigs are gorgeous and smart! My advice is to get your precious paper in safe storage in this unit first, and then see what you might be able to do to beautify it later on. There are various beautifying techniques that aren't too messy either and could be done in situ. Best wishes