I Never Promised You A Rose Garden

Yet another lamp bulb blown this week. I flip the switch, see a flash and hear a pop. Sigh.

Yet, there is a Second Use For Everything!

First step is to separate the bulb from the stem. I achieve this by removing all small children & pets from the vicinity, running a basin of cold water, wrapping a piece of string three times around the bulb where the metal socket meets the glass bulb, and loading the string with a few drops of kerosene or lamp oil. Rubber gloves and glasses complete the scene.

I light the wick and let it burn upwards, enveloping, if it will, the metal socket. After five seconds of this I plunge the bulb, metal socket down, into the cold water and hear a satisfying "pop" as the glass cracks in a fairly neat, but sharp-edged, circle. My theory is that if anything is going to shatter outwards, the water will dampen, so to speak, the motion.

A quick twist separates the metal socket from the glass bulb.

Below is a photo of the glass bulb, waiting for the shards.

I chose shards of a broken clay pot, figuring that the clay shards would absorb and retain water, sponge-like.

I am using a small hammer gently to break the clay pot into fragments no bigger than a quarter-inch on a side. Yes, that's last-year's yellow-pages being used as a protective mat. When I'm done it will go into a vermicomposter, taking with it small particles of clay.

Below is a photo of the glass bulb, holding its volume of pottery shards. I placed it in an empty coffee beaker (Second Use For Everything!) to stop it tipping over. Now I know the correct volume of shards I will empty the glass bulb temporarily.

Below you can see some philodendron cuttings. I learned some years ago to trim the stalk below a node, and to strip off leaves from two nodes. This gives me two leafless nodes which will root readily. Leaves would rot in the potting medium (which in my case is just water and clay shards).

And here is the glass bulb, primed with four philodendron cuttings and tanked up with shards and topped up with tap water.

If my friends ask me what it is, I will say proudly "It's a Bulb Garden".

Well, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden!

Thanks for reading this. I hope that you are inspired.