Guess what landed in our backyard: The Sequal

For all of you who were stumped by the images from our Guess what landed in our backyard post then brace yourselves for the answer:

*drumroll*

...I have no idea either.

What I do know is where it came from, which is certainly something and even more certainly less disconcerting. It was another dumpstering find, one that I wouldn't have taken home had Britt and I literally not just been talking about material to build an awning for our back porch that morning.

The object is... well, huge. I'm not particularly certain about its dimensions but spread out it nearly fills our backyard. That being said its likely somewhere around 1/4 acre. What is more shocking, and subsequently perplexing, about its size is that the piece we have is only about a quarter of the whole (I know because I saw the other 3 pieces laying near the dumpster as well.)

When I first picked it up I surmised it to be a billboard since many companies opt to use tarp style billboards instead of paying for the cost of painting and/or installation of more permenant billboard material. However, the dimensions on this thing are waaaaay too big to be a billboard. The "small" piece of it which we now poccess is probably a billboard size itself.

The other odd thing is that some of the text on it is only 2 or 3 inches tall, making it ineffective for billboard distances. What was this used for really? No idea, honestly. Based on the text and imagery it seems to have been some kind of advertisement for a phone company but this piece of material would have been seriously enormous.

Nevertheless, for our purposes its awsome. The material itself is some kind of rubberized plastic which makes it (as I'm sure was its intent) weatherproof. It also is actually a small mesh, which will allow for both (some) light as well as air to pass through the (for lack of a better word) fabric.

This is wonderful news for two reasons: First of all, this material will be essentially ideal for the awning which we are looking to make for our back porch. Allowing some light, but providing shade, and also able to stand up to sun and other harsh elements.

The other benefit of the material, since we have more than enough to spare, is that it should also function as a pretty useful cold frame for our garden bed. We have a funny growing season here, we have enough sun for many months, but frosts come in pretty early sometimes. Hopefully this material will be both insulative and permeable enough to give us another month or two of growing for our new crops of spinach, swiss chard, beets, kale and winter squash. Maybe pumpkins too, providing our dachshund doesn't eat any more of them.