Changes in consumer shopping habits have forever altered the face of the retail experience. Amazon has led the way with its Prime subscription. With it, many items we would typically buy in brick-and-mortar stores can instead be delivered to our door for the same price and quite often for even less. While businesses grapple to deal with the new reality, one unforeseen consequence is the pile of cardboard in my garage. It’s always there. I can battle it back with a trip to the landfill devoted exclusively to cardboard, and in a matter of days, there it is again.
However, on rare occasions, a nuisance can be a blessing. Like the glasses of water left in random locations in the movie Signs, there might just be a reason they are there.
As a hobby gardener, I tend to get excited when the weather breaks. When the air gets warm, I’m ready to start planting, despite the fact that I have battled late-season frost warning countless times. Last year there was a serious hard frost on Mother’s Day. By May I thought surely I was in the clear, so the garden was almost entirely planted. Faced with a disaster, it occurred to me that I had a wealth of containers that could protect my little greenlings, Amazon, to the rescue. I proceeded to cover each plant with a cardboard box and a brick. It worked like a charm. Despite the late freeze, everyone survived unscathed.
So, with three days of freeze warnings in the forecast this past week, the boxes were deployed. Once again the garden has survived care of Amazon.com.
Now to dispose of a bunch of soggy cardboard.
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