FISHING BUOYS IN THE GARDEN

There is a beach only a few minutes walk, through the back yard and an empty lot away, from my house.  The grand kids refer to it as Grandma's beach because it is near the house and also because I am one of many who watch over the beach.  We go swim there.  We walk there and observe nature and watch the changes on the beach with the tides and seasons.  Most importantly, we pick up the plastic flotsam that comes in from the ocean.  I throw it with the household garbage in the collection bin which goes to H Power to be burnt for electricity.   Much of this plastic comes from the other side of the Pacific Ocean or from the fishing industry.  Most of the plastic has been in the water for a long time and may have been part of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.....a giant gyre of  marine debris that sits out in the north Pacific ocean.  Some days it is just small stuff coming in but after a big storm large objects can come in like fishing crates and racks which I put to good use in my plant nursery area.  (Frugal in the Garden,  April, 2016)

Another thing that comes in is fishing buoys.  In the 60's up to the 80's it was possible to find glass blue/green buoys which make a nice collection.  It is very rare to find one of these days....maybe one gets kicked off a distant island in a storm to still arrive here.  There are plenty of plastic and Styrofoam buoys that show up now.  If I find a interesting new one I bring it home and hang it around the garden for a free decoration and it is rather interesting to see the different types.   A few years ago I looked at a New Zealand gardening book that showed pictures of quirky gardens there and some people had totally gone over board on collecting fishing buoys in their gardens.  I decided I did not want to look too crazy so I limit it to one of each type of buoy and leave the others up on the sandbank for others to take home.  There are a few gardeners around in Hawaii that use the buoys to decorate their garden.  The most popular way is to hang them in trees like baubles on a Christmas tree.  They look really good on a wide stretching tree like the Beach Almond/Kamani  Others sell them on eBay or cut them in half to grow plants in.

I am putting up a few photos to show how I use them in my garden.

We call this big barrel size buoy The Hippo.  The kids like  to balance on it.
You can see mother of pearl growing on it and it probably came from a pearl
farm in Japan that got washed away in the tsunami  of 2011.

Aloha