After a brief Fool’s Spring, Second Winter is upon us, leaden and inevitable. But, despite the slush, there are cheering hints of colour: I can see a pop of red in the garden from my office window. Is it a tulip? No – it’s the lid from a protein shake beaker. They’ve been living out there for nearly a year. After I fell over yet another one festering next to the sofa with three inches of stinking “plant protein” left to ferment in the bottom, the iron entered my soul. I chucked them all outside, unwisely reasoning that at some point someone would need, retrieve and clean them.
That never happened, and I have doubled down on my idiocy by just leaving them there. They have now become a garden feature, the kind of thing you notice occasionally, think “I should do something about that,” then ignore. The lids became separated from the beakers and set out on a frolic of their own, rolled by the wind in all directions. I see one beaker is gracing a pot of daffodils; another miraculously appeared on the scaffolding covering the house.
Occasionally, when I pass them, I take pictures of them to circulate to the household WhatsApp. One protein enthusiast who may be related to me responded unrepentantly to a photo of three nestled in a plant pot this autumn, gloop still terrifyingly intact, by explaining he was “trying to develop a bacterium adapted to the high amino acid environment of vegan protein powder”.
Biochemistry experiment or site-specific found-object art piece (they just need a Damien Hirst-esque title, something like The Impossibility of Doing Anything Constructive in 2023), they are now a monument to my sloth. I would passive-aggressively plant something pretty in them if I weren’t so lazy; instead I’m hoping they find a place in the backyard ecosystem. The beakers would make a nice prefab nest for long-tailed tits, maybe; hedgehogs could sip water from the lids. Worst-case scenario, they’ll be a fun puzzle for future archaeologists.
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
