The Best Things in Life Are Free

Starting a garden doesn't have to be a big investment. All you need is some dirt, seeds or plants, and water. And one of the best places to find free plants and garden implements is on Freecycle, a web site where people post stuff they are willing to give away and also things that they'd like some generous soul to give them. All free. Seriously!

Jefferson County's Freecycle is found here, and Clallam County's is here, but Freecycle is worldwide, so just go here, and you can find your own local posting board. You'll have to "join" the group and follow the posting guidelines, but it's all pretty painless. While I wrote this, there was a push lawn mower and a chicken coop being offered at the Jefferson County site. There are almost always plant starts on the board, so when I went looking there the other day, a 60s-something, Marrowstone Island resident named Rita Kepner was giving away kale starts.

I took the bait, called her, and went out to Marrowstone on Friday morning. It turned out to be one of the highlights of my week.


Rita and her husband bought their waterfront property in the '70s when Marrowstone land was still raw and they were selling it cheap, she told me. While she worked, her husband stayed home and built their house by hand, using lots of windows to take advantage of the beautiful view. The garden was once located on another part of the property, but as the trees grew tall over the years, her husband built raised beds in a sunnier spot. The kale Rita gave me was some that had over-wintered and re-seeded itself. Not only did she give me that, but she sent me home with some chives that made the car smell wonderful and a batch of wild strawberries that make for great ground cover, too. She used this cute little garden trowel she found on the beach to dig them up.

Because Rita's garden was out in the open and not fenced, I asked her what she did about the deer.

"I talk to them," she said

I thought, yeah, I talk to them too, but most of the time I'm swearing, and that has never been effective.

But then Rita told me she used a rotten egg solution to keep the deer from dining in her garden. She takes an organic egg and mixes it up, puts that in a quart jar and fills it with water, shakes that up, and sets the jar outside to let the solution rot. Once it has become foul, she dips a stick in it and flicks the solution about in the garden. The deer don't like the odor and stay away, she said. Since the solution wears off and gets washed away by the rain, this must be done about once a week.

Rita opened the jar, and said, "Smell it!"

It was indeed some of the nastiest stuff I've ever stuck my nose into.

Rita also told me that there's a group of people on Marrowstone getting organized to trade garden ideas and solutions. She mentioned, too, that she had recently gone back to school at Washington State University, and earned her Ph.D. in communications. When I told her I was also a WSU alum, she raised her arms and exclaimed, "Go Cougs!", the universal rallying cry for all connected with the school.

Inside her house, there were several sketches hanging on the walls, and Rita casually mentioned she was also an artist. What she didn't tell me is that she was a founder of the Bainbridge Arts and Humanities Council, is listed in the Who's Who in American Art, served in the Peace Corps in Russia, and has several sculptures in public and private collections, among other things. I found all of this out when I Googled her to make sure I had spelled her name correctly.

Even before I knew she was a fellow Coug and all of those other things, I knew I wanted to keep in touch with Rita long after the kale was planted, and we exchanged email addresses.

As for Freecycle, since I've been making a lot of homemade potato chips lately, I decided I'd like a mandoline to cut the chips uniformly, so I posted a "want" message. The day wasn't even over before another local gardener of some repute who wishes to remain anonymous, called and offered me one. I already knew Susan, so it wasn't a stranger transaction like a lot of Freecycle things can be, but it does prove my point further which is that gardeners are almost always the nicest and most generous of folk, and often some of the smartest people, too.