Apparently not. Somebody’s taken rather a lot of broken glass and left it smashed at the side of the road, where it’s spilling into the forest.

Rats.

Oh, and what colour are they ALL? Yup. They’re turquoise. Like this turquoise and that turquoise. Of course.

Anyway. Here we have twinflowers growing on one of the old wrecks in the Gabriola forest. Flowers and salal are claiming this car, and the victory of the vegetation makes me happy.

At first I thought it was the world’s biggest beer bottle, but no. It’s made of plastic, and the letters on the plastic say PERFEX. Is this another leftover from somebody’s forest grow-op?

It’s actually a rusty metal spool, which probably once had cable around it. It’s in the Gabriola woods, of course. Where else would a rusting old thing be?

This one looked all rusty red, and I thought Aha! Finally a wreck that isn’t turquoise. But no, look what colour is mocking me in the middle of the wreck. Hmph.

One day in the woods I met the guy who’s been hanging these plastic things in the cedar tree. Wasn’t that an interesting conversation! He doesn’t take those things into the woods; he finds them in the woods and hangs them up. Why are there so many plastic bottles? Most of them held garden fertilizer, he told me. Somebody must have been growing something in the woods over there. Oh, that something – right!

Well, that makes sense. Why else would anybody carry fertilizer bottles into the forest, empty them, and then leave the bottles lying around? I went back to the cedar tree to get a better look at those containers. Yup: fertilizer bottles.

I can only hope that the people responsible for last summer’s Gabriola hidden garden aren’t leaving litter about the place.

Related post: mystery in a puddle.

Regular readers will be wondering about that splash of turquoise. Could it be? Why yes, now that you mention it. It is another turquoise car wreck.

Of these old cars, there seem to be a disproportionate number of them that are turquoise. Really! Now, why would that be?

When I blogged about a previous turquoise wreck in the Gabriola forest, a commenter, SL, came along and said

This is a door panel (or what is left of one), off a 1955, 56 or 57 chevy. From what I can see it includes the inside window roller handle, door handle and the arm rest. Probably a 57 because the turquoise colour was more popular in 57.

OK, so how long do you suppose a car made in 57 lasted, before somebody finally wanted to get rid of it by dumping it in the forest? 15 years? And, if so, can we assume that dumping turquoise cars in the Gabriola woods was the 1972 thing to do?

I know, I know, you’ll tell me I need to get out of the house more. But I do, you see. And that’s when I find old cars in the woods.

This pail is fairly new in its role as trailmarker, though another prominent pail has been serving as landmark for a few years now.

So, clothes dryers. Dump them in the forest seems to have been the favoured disposal method for old clothes dryers on Gabriola; I’ve found quite a few in the woods over the years. Recently I’ve been re-visiting the ones I know about, thinking that maybe I could find a good dryer drum for Michael Mehta, who mentioned that he might make a light/coffee table out of one.

Michael, bad news on that front. It seems that the old dryer drums weren’t perforated, so they’re probably not what you’re after. Also, the clothes dryers in the Gabriola forest are rusted, and often crumpled, too. But while looking at them on your behalf, I noticed this: they’ve been shot.

Almost every old dryer I’ve come across seems to have bullet holes in its side. Who goes around shooting old dryers?

I used to walk that main loop (from end of Ricki Avenue to the end of Jeanette Avenue) every day, and I’m sure I would have noticed this if it had been at the roadside then. Has somebody dragged this out of the bushes just recently?

What era do you suppose it dates from? 50s, maybe? Apparently turquoise and white were popular colours for cars back then. But what do I know? I’m no car expert.

I am good at finding dead cars on Gabriola, though. Just when I think I’ve come across all the cars that could possibly be roting away in the woods, I stumble across yet another one.

Here we have a clothes dryer that’s been carefully set upon a stump. Perhaps somebody thought it would be a handy trail marker?

Update: the washing machine nearby is much prettier.

I suspect the bottles I’m finding are left by teens. I figure they don’t want to take the bottles home for their parents to see, and that’s why they leave them in the forest. At least this time the boozers put all the bottles in a bag and left them at the start of the trail, rather than strewn everywhere. The bag contained 19 beer cans, 4 vodka bottles, and 1 rum bottle. All empty, of course.

Although teen drinking is a concern (did you hear about the teen who had to be taken away by ambulance recently, due to alcohol poisoning?) it’s even more alarming to walk through the Tunnel and find new bottles along the road every day — does that indicate that somebody’s driving drunk, and throwing the bottles out the window?

Although the RDN cleaned up the dump that used to be on the top of the hill in the 707-acre park, there are lots of other places in the Gabriola woods where one finds old cars, shingles, stuff from when people renovated, and whatnot.

I’m always amazed that people would dump their garbage in the middle of a perfectly nice forest, but there you go.