Can book worms be earth worms?

In fact, I really haven't got a clue, but if there's a slim chance for this morph to take place, it's happening right now, in what I have taken to calling my garden.
In our recent home improvement frenzy, no prisoners were taken and sacrifices were made with light hearts and a song on our lips.
The Mister decided that he was not impressed with the heavy, dark bookcases anymore. They look a bit like this HEMNES unit from IKEA (maybe a previous range, I forgot their name):

They looked beautiful in our previous house, but with the new white mantelpiece (oooh, I'll have to tell you about that bad boy soon!) they are not exactly pleasing to the eye anymore, and the years of serving in a 5 cat household started to show on them as well. So something had to be done.

At first we meant to take one of them to bits and get rid of the pieces on the skip. (which isn't too far away, would have been three trips on foot carrying the stuff over) But seriously, who were we kidding? Too lazy to even take the thing apart, and we knew dang well it wouldn't happen. So we figured we could make room in some corner of the house- but then we couldn't be bothered dragging it up the very narrow, treacherous steps. So what were we to do? No fireplace to burn it in, no way to use it elsewhere in the house and no way to pass it on to a new good home as years of... cat activity made that quite impossible. 

So the Man said, innocently: "What if we use it as a planter?" I actually thought he meant to place it outside upright and use it for lots of little pots with lots of little plants in them. And I loved the idea. But then he went "no, I mean as an actual planter, flat on its back and filled with soil!" "THAT'S CRAZY TALK, man, what are you thinking??? Let's do it!"

Basically, it is a much larger version of the japanese temple. All the rest of the awful junk and debris went into it and then we filled it up with soil. Bless him, my darling went and got loads of big, heavy bags of soil from the local gardening shop on foot, probably disfiguring his spine for all eternity. I used to think that I am physically stronger than him (leftover arrogance from those early years of bodybuilding, believe it or not), but he proved me wrong. I lugged one bag and nearly collapsed, but he made quite a few round trips and never faltered. How he does it I will never know.

Anyway, just feast your eyes on our OOAK planter for a minute, if you will:

Sorry about the shadowy photos, that's all I got for the time being.

Under the plastic lid some lavender is hopefully growing, the kitchen unit pansies have a lot more room to play, two ferns are doing me immensely proud (I LOVE ferns from the bottom of my heart, just as much as pansies.) and some random rescue plant called coreopsis from the reduced section in the supermarket is actually thriving now. Oh, and there is a passion flower baby in the left corner, which I am willing to grow and prosper with every ounce of willpower I can possibly transfer onto a little plant that really doesn't want to be here and would rather spend some quality time ANYWHERE but where it is now. 

The stone slabs are actually natural slate roof tiles that came down in one storm or another. And the plastic lid is one half of an old propagator, the other half being kept, just in cae we feel the need to, well, propagate stuff again. 

It all looks a bit daft in the photos, but I swear that if you came 'round for a little bbq, you would like it. Unless you think that having a bbq in a garden made from trash by folks who have next to no disposable income is no fun, in which case you miss out on this:

And I can't see anybody right in their minds not wanting to grab a plate, sip some homemade sangria (sober option with grape juice available, fresh fruit as standard) and climb into a cardboard box to run head- first into the next unsuspecting citizen they can find. 

Be our guest, anytime.

The book worms are waiting.

Oh, and since those pictures were taken we have upgraded to a foldable bbq which collapses to a tiny flatpack of about 1 cm thickness. Nothing if not posh, guys, nothing if not posh.