errantember | Entries tagged with flagship suburbia

The collective effort of Flagship Suburbia has resulted in 60 sq. ft. of intensely planted garden bed. It's the most ambitious planting here so far. Most of them are heirloom from the seed exchange, so we'll be able to harvest our seeds for next season. Included are carrots, broccoli, fenel, kale, radishes, marigolds, spinach, and two varieties of lettuce. Planting and some wall building were both braved at night in the rain, but it was worth it, because it's done.

This is also the earliest we've ever gotten spring planting done, and I'm excited to finally be able to beat the heat!

We've gotten our first order of heirloom seeds from Seed Savers Exchange, a non-profit seed exchange. We have a 200 sq. ft. garden under a very poorly maintained hoop house right out the front door that's been largely overrun with Bermuda grass. Few plants are left from last season, so I've been pulling Bermuda all day in preparation for spring planting of cold season crops. Even though I only got about 1/3 of the wall around this garden built, and therefore only about 1/3 of the soil into it, it's still the best place to start planting. To reclaim more of the lawn for gardening will require hours of back-breaking labor, as the soil is about 1/3 limestone rocks. You can't dig with a shovel, you have to use a pick axe or rock hammer. For now, getting this existing garden prepped is much easier.
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If I'd had time, I would have made mock-ups like these *before* I committed to paint colors. There are several more I added to the set for your consideration. They integrate some of the suggestions people made as alternatives to the original Shocking Fuchsia.

Current Location: The Guest Wing

Today, over the course of about ten hours, I mortared seventy-four tiles into place on my bathroom wall. I can't say the result will look quite as good as the original, but I *can* say that it's more waterproof, will last longer, and will no longer attract tiny insects that devour my home. And, considering this is my first tile job ever, I'm pretty happy with the way it's coming out.

Tomorrow I grout. By the end of the week, we should be able to shower in there again.

I was pretty happy with the performance of the Rotozip RZ125 1/8 inch Carbide Tile Cutting Bit. I probably modified about fifteen tiles with it, actually cut all the way through one, and used it to remove the old mastic from countless others. It was slightly cheaper than the Dremel version, and it worked fine on my Dremel. For job requiring a lot of custom cutting it wouldn't be enough, but for this job it was perfect, especially compared to renting and operating a tile saw.

Current Location: The Bathroom
Current Music: BzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzZZZZ!

I was given this frightening, unsubtle reminder today that the Table Saw is basically a steel lightsaber...

Lots more stuff behind the...uh...

Cut.
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Current Location: The Floor

So there has been a solar cooking thread going on in on the Austin Permaculture list, and one of the designs that's popular is to use a parabolic satellite dish. Most of the discussion mentions using smaller dishes, a meter in diameter or less, and several people have mentioned being able to boil water in 5-10 minutes using one. I'd love to be able to do solar cooking, and it would also be nice to use it to heat water.

Enter the Death Star:

I have one of those Old Skool satellite dishes, like 6 or 7 feet across, that's been uselessly attached to my shed since I moved in. If you can boil gallons of water with a 1 meter dish, imagine what you could do with a 2 meter dish! Solar power is proportional to surface area.

surface area of a 1 meter dish = 56 sq. ft.
surface arfe of a 2 meter dish = 266 sq. ft.

Vehicular Flambe, anyone?

The bamboo floor project, which had previously been stalled since Crossmas, is almost complete. We're half way across the kitchen, with everything else completely finished, and all the tricky cutting and joinery behind us. One or two more days and we will be orgasmically finished laying planks. A day or two more and we should be able to finish the trim, which will be in a dark coffee to match the rest of the house and make the light bamboo floor pop. We've been slowed down by the necessity of running the tablesaw outside at a time that:

1) Won't piss of the neighbors
2) Isn't over 100 degrees
3) Allows us to see visually the relative positions of fingers and the blade

I finally got tired of only working for 2 hours a day, so tonight I attacked the woodshop, which had become so disorganized it was no longer safe to work in. I got about 2/3 finished cleaning it up, including making an organizer for the extra wood, and removing about half of what may well be the ugliest shag carpet in human history.

Once the floor is done we'll be throwing a snack-and-movie party to christen it.

Current Location: The Kitchen Floor
Current Music: Down in Hole - Alice in Chains, for the last two weeks

Just when everybody thought it was safe to assume I'd never emerge from my heroin-addict-level of torpor, I suddenly started accomplishing things yesterday. The tree I cut down to a stump in the front yard came back with a vengeance, resurrecting itself into a 15 ft. tall bush in the few months since the original deed. It was blocking out the view of most of my front yard, and therefore the necessary guilt feelings to ever accomplish anything outside again, not to mention stealing valuable minerals from my soil.

It was once again Chainsaw Time.
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Current Location: Forward Zone Alpha

After waking up at about 5:30 PM today, I launched into another chicken project with a vengeance. My Fine Feathered Friends have revealed a preference for roosting Elsewhere, Elsewhere, in this context, meaning somewhere other than the coop. The manual relocation this problem causes every night is a far cry from my eventual goal of 100% coop-door-automation.

"Wow, this automatic door is really rad. I'm totally impressed."

"Thanks!"

"Where are the chickens?"

"Over there."

"You mean 'over there' as in 'not in the coop?'"

"Well...yeah."

After perusing a chicken book from the library, I hatched a plot to add a roost to the existing coop, and I just got done installing it and hand-relocating four quiescent poultry to their new digs.

If you push on their chest with your wrist, chickens will climb onto it, just like a parrot.

Just like a parrot, only heavier.

A certain amount of disoriented flapping was involved, but the girls are installed in their new home, and my roommate can look forward to at least several hours of power-tool free audio 10 feet from his bedroom.

Current Location: The Coop
Current Music: Under Construction

Susan came over to help me cut up the bigger chunks of tree into fireplace-sized chunks today. It took us about 2 hours with two chainsaws to finish the job. The front yard still looks like some kind of tree-eating monster with indigestion shat all over it, but tomorrow I'll spend some time stacking and organizing, and then I'll get our louder-than-AC/DC woodchipper, Nibbles, back from

trippedbreaker and get started on the de-brushing.

Current Location: Covered in sawdust

The iffy-looking 30 foot, 20-inch-thick linden tree that used to tower over most of my front yard is now lying in pieces on the ground instead. With no previous tree removal experience, and minimal help from Echo, I was able to cut down the entire thing by myself in one day. I'm really surprised I was able to do it that fast. Like many real-work-involving projects, it looked worse than it was. It was also fun to do a stupid, dangerous male thing without help, which I haven't done in a while.
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Current Location: The Ground, thank God.
Current Music: The Forest - The Cure