Warning: I Brake For Buckets

If you asked me which of my gardening tools I find the most useful, I'd have to say.... my buckets. It seems like no matter what project I'm working on, the first thing I do is reach for a bucket. And although I have a bazillion of them, I always feel like I need more.....

Buckets are useful for schlepping things up the beach, like starfish....

Seashell sand....

Herring eggs....

Seaweed....

Salmon Carcasses....

And fish bones.....

Sometimes I haul bucketfuls of stuff up to the truck and dump them out directly into the truckbed, but most of the time I just stack the buckets in the back for easy unloading and cleanup at home.

Buckets are useful when you need to move things from one part of the garden to another, like wood chips....

Duck pond sludge......

Dirt, and rocks, and weeds.

 And most jobs require at least 2 of them...so you always have one within reach!

They're handy when I'm gathering vegetables....

Butchering ducks....

Making gift baskets....

Hauling tools, or picking huckleberries....

 And they're an absolute must for hauling spent grain from the brewery, and ground up fish gurrey from the processing plant.

Even when buckets are upside they're useful..... I sit on them when I'm weeding....

And cover plants with them in the Spring to protect them from frost.

But watch out! Buckets have a mind of their own......when I'm not using them I try to keep them all tucked away neatly under the shelf alongside the house....

But I notice that when the wind blows and they get restless, and wander all over the garden....

 And they're sneaky.... there's almost always one lurking in the shadows in every photo I take....

I never throw a broken bucket away....when they start to leak I use them to hold plants that are waiting to be transplanted.....

And when they get big cracks in them I cut off their bottoms to use as trays under potted plants...

Buckets come in many different sizes, shapes and colors....

Round or square.... tall or short.....red, white or blue or anything else you can imagine.  I especially like the little ones. They are just perfect for little jobs and small loads....

A lot of people don't realize how handy buckets are. They bring random bags and boxes to gather vegetables....

Or only own a couple of buckets which limits the amount of stuff they can get from the beach. I still get a chuckle out of hearing Willow mutter under her breath as she hauled seaweed for the first time this summer..."I'm going to have to get more buckets."

So you may be wondering just how you go about getting yourself some buckets. Well, you never buy them! Buying them goes against the gardener's code! You have to COLLECT them. This involves some ingenuity on the gardener's part. You have to get creative, and always be looking out for that stray bucket that everyone else has overlooked. I have found them at the recycling center, in the free piles at garage sales, by the garbage cans down at the boat harbor.....and yes.....I've been known to stop my car in the middle of the road to grab one that's in the ditch. .....This may surprise you, but I am not alone. The last time I stopped to grab one, the guy going the other way stopped too, and as I hurried back to my car I heard him say something like, "Hey, I was going to get that!"

And I may or may not have said something back like...."Too bad, loser!"