Did you know that a penny in a vase of fresh-cut flowers will help preserve them for longer than plain water? I did. However, I also forgot that I had put a penny in a recent vase full of flowers. When I emptied the vase into the sink, I dumped the penny as well.
Normally, that wouldn't be noteworthy except that I now have a garbage disposal. I have a love-hate relationship with my disposal, as it has already needed a service call by the plumber when I moved in. This time I thought the problem was my fault for putting flower stems down the disposal. Garbage disposals can be very choosy about what they will chew up and what they will choke on.
After the flower stem episode, the disposal was making such an awful noise - metal against metal - that I didn't use it for fear of catastrophic results. I finally brought the plumber in after a lengthy conversation about the cost of replacement versus abandonment (meaning going back to having a sink with no disposal). This isn't baseball, you only get two strikes in my household before you get replaced/abandoned and if the disposal wasn't repairable, it was going to be abandoned!
In comes the plumber - a charming young man named Clement - who performed his magic and discovered the awful truth. It was a penny stuck in the disposal that was making the noise. Once he got it out, the disposal hummed merrily along and is now fit as a fiddle once again.
Clement and I had a good laugh after he handed me the penny with a wink and said, “A penny for your thoughts?"
Funny guy!
Cost of the visit by the plumber: $134. A good laugh with Clement: priceless.
Note to self: If you're going to put pennies in the vases, put a sticker on the bottom of it to remind you to retrieve the penny once you dump the water/ before running the disposal.
Welcome to “The Pipeline”
Barbara Dickinson, Owner and Operator
Footnote: From "Southern Living": “Dropping a copper penny into the vase. The reason pennies are considered a smart way to keep flowers alive longer is because copper is a fungicide, so it naturally kills off those pesky bacteria and fungi that are trying to camp out in your flowers' vase and shorten the lifespan of your stems.”