Last night’s empty bottle of Malbec and my mother’s obsessive crafting have inspired me!  The Irish sprinkler system, first discovered when my sister lived and blogged from Ireland for a year, has been upgraded again. This time with the help of two small items - glass marbles and wire from a hanging candle holder.

As I stood over the sink rinsing out the wine bottle, I started to channel my mother, the MacGyver of marbles.  In the first year after discovering flat-backed marbles, she Gooped them onto everything within a ten-foot radius - mirrors, frames, hot plates, napkin holders, you name it, it’s now covered in marbles.  Anyway, it dawned on me that marbles solved my earlier problem of making the plastic bottle look prettier; why couldn’t they solve this problem too?  So I started shoving them down the bottle neck one by one and voila!

It may take a few tries to get the marbles positioned properly, so make sure to place the tip of your finger into the neck before flipping the bottle upside down.  Then add or subtract marbles to get the drip right; my bottle is a little less than a quarter full.  Positioning the marbles was easy; positioning the bottle got a little tricky.  If you push the bottle into the soil, the soil clogs the neck.  If you tilt the bottle on its side, you have to jiggle it every once in a while to keep the water flowing.  Fortunately for me, I’m a bit of a craft hoarder and was able to pull the wire candle holder straight out of my cabinet.  For those of you non-hoarders, a wire hanger would probably work.  I’ll try it over the weekend and let you know.  Whatever you choose, the point is to keep the bottle slightly elevated above the soil.  I wedged the wire into the side of the pot to provide some stability. 

Here’s the final product, and it works great!  The Plumbago is now as perky as I am after a bottle of wine!