Useful tools beyond duct tape

You know how many people love duct tape? Duct tape is so useful for so many needs. I see cars with silver duct tape patching up auto booboos and red duct tape holding together translucent red cellophane over tail lights. Now artists and crafters are fashioning multi-patterned and colored duct tape into jewelry. Ingenious for our beloved favorite mending product.

Well, I love wire. All types of wire. I use wire for so many things. I need to connect things, especially in my veggie garden. Wire hangs trellises, hangs up my very long sign from my no longer existing Stepping Stones Wellness Center that now hangs on the fence of my backyard vegetable garden. My garden really is a wellness center growing healthy real foods. I couldn’t bear to throw it away after my successful venture with the wellness center, so I recycled it. It reminds me of risks I took, money I spent, and an important part of my personal history.

I have myself to rely on when I need to create something a carpenter could do better, but I like to be as self-sufficient as I can as I age and concern myself with the cost of things.

I had some left over 4 x 8 trellises I had to remove when my new neighbor put up a fence between our yards. Before then my trellis fence bordered my veggie garden letting in the light. I decided my funky pig wire grape trellis was a pitiful example of my “making do.” But grape vines are sturdy and I had to prop up my makeshift arbor with an old mop handle! That kept the whole thing from collapsing but was not pretty!

Enter wire. I recycled two of those 8-foot trellises, tepeed them, cut away the pig wire frame and wired the wooden trellises together. I inserted a 1” by1” center beam that most likely should have been screwed together to be stronger, but wire has always lasted well even when it rusts.

Now the grape arbor looks great, more natural, and should serve for a couple of years until I determine better carpentry needs to come along. I just need to figure out how to stabilize my new arbor so it doesn’t blow over in the wind. I may just wire it to the back fence!

Wire, my faithful tool for a single women bent on being a DIYer. Wire seems to last. I can replace it if it weakens from the weather, is affordable, and does what it is meant to do—hold things together. Simple, efficient, and mostly unseen.

I love wire. It is my go-to tool when my creative bent wants something instantaneous.

I think my grapes will appreciate having their lovely new trellis to grow over. My neighbor birds have taken to it with better footing for their flitting about for garden bugs and keeping a keen eye out for my gregarious and hopeful bird watching cat.

Krystle Shapiro, MSHN, owns NewTritionally Yours! providing nutrition education classes. She can be reached at 208-290-6760.