Strolling down Bayside Walk in Mission Beach the other morning, we appreciated Patt Miller’s unique Valentine to the community: a cheery row of pink, red, and white plastic sand shovels dangling from the metal awning of her cottage just south of Santa Clara Place. As reported by John Wilkens in the San Diego Union-Tribune recently, Miller moved to the bayside location about five years ago, and came up with the shovels-as-decor idea after she started cleaning up beach trash as a form of community service.
She’s found so many of the discarded toys over the years that she now changes them out a half dozen times a year, saluting St. Patrick’s Day with green ones, Easter (pink, yellow, and blue), Fourth of July (guess), Halloween (orange), and Christmas (red, green, and white). For the Yuletide, she adds a tree decorated with other flotsam-cum-ornaments.
