elinor, making fun of starchitects? bad karma. now when you are hiring people for your mega-successexy office i will be forced to send snarky e-mails about how shite your staff is.
@ barry apparently helmet is a student project but i predict it will be produced. is very good design.
school is over today for a month of summer holidays for the kids so am working from home for a day and skyping into the office. summer hols are always fun to work around.
In other news, I'm totally jonesing some chocolate covered pretzels at the moment. Bought a bag at Trader Joe's last Saturday and completely devoured them in two sittings.
I'm craving ice cream, FrozFruit bars, flan, strawberry pie, key lime pie, a milkshake, a smoothie, an italian ice...basically anything at all cold and sweet. It's damn hot.
Barring dessert, I suppose it's never too hot for bourbon on the rocks.
hehe...if i ever do achieve this 'mega-successexy' (!!) status of which you speak, you can bring on those snarky emails...i'll take them as a badge of honor.
and thanks, file...now when i take the car in for repairs next week, i can pretend i know what i'm doing. i've been car-less all my life and recently inherited this thing...i know as much about cars as your average 17-yr. old. it's embarrassing. but unlike a lot of my friends, i at least do know how to drive...
rusty, nobody blows the high-pressure hot air quite like you do. :)
my husband had invitations to a museum opening...no sweets, but great drinks, snacks, and art...and now daniel craig is on tv! good night, all.
@ toasteroven - your post sounded like straight up Chinese to me. permaculture? guild? three sisters? it was like you were suddenly talking code to sneak landscape news past the archi-enemy lines.
Also, the very first thing I thought of when I read "food forest" was how I am reading a murder mystery about a mushroom expert who goes foraging in a forest and eats the wrong mushroom and dies. duh duh duuuuhhhh... probably not what you are talking about.
@ erin et al - I literally cannot conceive of how one might ride a bike without a helmet. The couple times I've forgotten mine I've FREAKED OUT. Felt totally anxious the whole ride. Although I know I've heard about how there's apparently debate on the whole helmet v. non-helmet thing?
Did you hear about the biker recently down in SD who was killed on a trail separated and elevated from the freeway? Some lady randomly ran off the freeway, up the embankment, through a chain link fence, and shot across the bike path, and unfortunately someone was on it in the wrong place at the wrong time. That someone was my friend's brother. He was a super experienced cyclist, and helmeted. Sometimes there's only so much you can do.
@ Donna - I have fam in Traverse City. I LOVE it. You should totally move there! Michigan rocks. Also part of the reason I started dating my SO, no joke, was that SO makes incredibly awesome "that's what she said" jokes at exactly the right time. I have snorted water out my nose so many times...
Friends don't let friends move to Michigan ;o) I love Michigan actually. We used to rent a cabin up on one of the lakes up there every summer as a kid. So many good memories. Such great weather.
Speaking of bike accidents, anyone else been watching the Tour? Talk about some serious carnage. I'm surprised that some of them were able to walk away as unscathed as they were and continue cycling.
three sisters is corn, beans, and squash (although an awesome name for a lesbian organic restaurant). barry - I think it's a little more complicated than companion planting because it involves animals. Right now I'm currently learning about nitrogen fixers... and that concrete foundations make surrounding soil more alkaline. all this is partly due to me figuring out what I want to do with my front and back gardens (we don't have "yards" around here) - but now I'm also really curious about how different building materials affect soil quality. don't you guys know that my thing is buildings, cities, and food?
traverse city - that's michigan's wine country. it's a really beautiful part of the sate - sleeping bear dunes, petosky...
how different building materials affect soil quality
Now *this* sounds interesting, especially if you bring in food and what nutrients a vegetable might gain being planted next to a certain building material: does rebar add iron to tomatoes? Do concrete footings up the calcium quantity of Broccoli? Do beans grown beneath the Bilbao rain runoff have higher concentrations of zinc?! Fantastic!
Hm, I thought it was zinc coated copper, or titanium or something.
Hey, did you guys read this comment over on the developers thread? " ultramodern will always be popular among architects because the style allows any hack to throw together a bunch of random lines and circles" I LOL'd, then made a slightly damning comment, but I'm really not up for the full on spanking that comment deserves. Anyone else feel like taking it on?
toaster, please have your soil tested for lead, especially if planting within 10' or so of a building that may have used lead-paint. Many (sub)urban soils have detectable levels of Pb from pre-1978 gasoline too. Concrete does make soils more alkaline (but this will only impact acid loving plants like blueberries), most veggies are pretty tolerant to the normal range of pH that is found in typical residential settings. Yes, rebar and other metals do add to the micronutrient levels of the soil (some good, some bad) - but tomatoes need more calcium that concrete will add - compost your egg shells (or just sprinkle them on the ground in the garden where the tomatoes will be. Microrhyzial communities are important - you can be mystical about them (like permaculture) or pragmatic. compost makes healthy soil, which makes yummy and prolific veggies.
barry - I'm currently using raised beds (made out of untreated cedar) on impervious surfaces and containers for my veggies. I won't plant anything I'm planning on eating until I've finished having my property tested for lead and arsenic - I know the patch of dirt in front of my house is contaminated from a home test. I'm getting both the topsoil and subsoil tested so I know if I have the option of just replacing the topsoil.
I am definitely more pragmatic - but am interested in beneficial groupings so that I don't have to add stuff.
wait - is "permaculture" considered mystical - crunchy mother-earth hippy nonsense? I know there are criticisms of the movement (mostly centered around implementation and destruction of existing healthy "non-native" ecosystems), but I haven't heard that one. I'm probably closer to the food sovereignty camp than anything else.
Didn't say that. But I will say that permaculture isn't always very rigorous from an ecological/scientific perspective. But the weirdness is part of the charm. Permaculture does seem to be more of a cult then other branches of the organic/traditional ag movement.
there seems to be a lot of good news being announce on TC... with that in mind, I'd like to share the best news I got all week... a text from the wife, "Got the stain out of ur metabolism shirt :)"
re: permaculture my own feeling has always been along the lines of Barry's. There is a lot of stored/traditional knowledge and interest in things urban agriculture/sustainability in terms of the groups/people I know who are interested/involved with permaculture. At least in my experience though they are focused very explicitly on permaculture not the larger set of issues re: to agricultural urbanism and tend to have/take a more folksy (and perhaps lacking in a "refined" aesthetic and or technical/scientific) understanding/approach.
Toaster - I'm interested to hear how tall your raised beds are and if you've had any problems with your veggies being root bound in the containers. I planted my basil in a smaller pot this year and it needs to be watered ALL THE TIME, which leads me to think it might be root bound. Barry - do you have any insight to this?
I'm toying with the notion of getting rid of all the grass in my front yard and turning it into a veggie/ perenial garden. Fortunately I don't think I'll have the issues this poor woman had, but you never know. I think that's the reason I've held off for so long doing it.
*M, smaller pots = less water available. try repotting in larger containers. you'll see if they are root bound or not as you do this. if they are, gently tease the roots apart. don't freak about running afoul of a local power-hungry bureacrat with a garden - there is no legal standing for the persecution that the women experienced.
I had a guy car door me on Commonweath Avenue in the Back Bay of Boston years ago. It was like slow motion. I saw the door open the guy start to get out and then he retreats to his mercedes and leaves the door wide open. I couldn't swirve into traffic cause it was all buzzing right along and so is did an adjustment and caught my elbow on his car door which flipped me end for end. I got up and went right at him. Called him a few dozen not so nice words....asking him how stupid could you be to not close the car door. Finally I heard him say, son let me take a look at your arm I'm a Doctor. Which I responded well I would rather see your drivers license. Which he produced, we exchanged a few more words and I hoofed it on foot back to the Architectural Office where I was headed at the time. Called a friend and went to the Hospital Emergency Room. Where they determined I had not smashed my elbow....but it sure felt like it. They were a bit baffled by some other items showing up in the x-ray. I told them it was most likely concrete as I had been in a accident where a concrete shut had pinned me against a building and I had almost severed my arm off. So I said, "I could live with a little concrete." My bike was totally trashed, so I had to go out and steal a new one...Just kidding :)
cool about the fish and lead. my father in laws place was part of the land polluted by cadmium from strip mining in japan that lead to something called itai-itai byo, or ouch ouch disease. the soil and fish were contaminated and made for brittle bones so people started cracking (no joke) hence the constant pain. they just finished replacing his soil a few years ago, about 30 years after the disease became an international thing. replaced the soil of his entire farm i think a meter or more deep. they been doing that slowly but surely since ages ago all over the area and only just got to him - his land has been empty all that time. crazy. all for a bit of metal in a hill some miles away.
jump "anyway, fish apparently are not enough sometimes" truth indeed...
snook i am not sure am I " going all Mayflower Pilgrim" on yall?
What i think i was trying to say earlier is that in my experience the people i know into permaculture here or abroad tend to be of the DIYer, Anarcho-progressive, artist sort of lifestyles. While other more "professionals" tend to talk about urban agriculture, sustainable urbanism etc....
my a/c is on the fritz too. i think its the resistor whcih is a cheap fix. it works fine if i am wearing shorts and a tshirt but if i have regullar clothes on it stops blowing after about a minute. fortunaltey its only in the mid 90s here and it looks like rain in the delta.
nam...I was thinking of the Indians planting a corn seed along with a fish. It was one of the first things the mayflower people learned from the indians. I wasn't getting snarky..
snook, I'm sorry to hear that. The dooring always scares me, but so far every time I've come close I've yelled (out of pure fear, not even voluntary enough to be trying to have an impact on the situation) and the near-offender has looked up and closed their door upon seeing me coming. So apparently my instincts do me some good.
Feeling very shitty for the past two days, so called the doc this morning and said hey, I don't think I'm supposed to be getting WORSE at this point, so they're trying to fit me into their afternoon. In the meantime, I'm back on the codeine pretty solidly. Weeeeeee
"While the topic of gardening and farming is up, anyone know what to look for in a good water collection barrel? Or have a model to recommend?"
If you want very cheap and easy...take small pieces of landscaping fabric and completely wrap (I used glue and a few zip cords for good measure) them over unglazed clay pots. Then just bury the clay pots in the ground large-hole side up. Cover with dirt or mulch. They'll hold water pretty well and pretty much release it only when the ground becomes dry. Slows drainage from watering too.
If you want to place these in areas with a bit of traffic. Just fill the pots up with a porous rock like lava stone or unpolished limestone. That way the fabric doesn't break or you fall into a hole and twist your ankle.
I came up with this idea because I read that in some parts of the world... clay pots buried in the ground are used for irrigation when surface water isn't available.
Unfortunately, in Florida, having puddles of open water sitting around is a health hazard.
that worked great for us, beccabec. we were looking at $10k+/- to hire a company to waterproof our basement. then we decided to start collecting water for our kitchen garden, bought a $75 rain barrel, and SOLVED our water problem! who knew!
Thread Central
" my guy typically just blows high-pressure air up the line and clears it out -- takes about 30 seconds."
That's what she said!
rusty I adore you! ;-)
lol !
elinor, making fun of starchitects? bad karma. now when you are hiring people for your mega-successexy office i will be forced to send snarky e-mails about how shite your staff is.
@ barry apparently helmet is a student project but i predict it will be produced. is very good design.
school is over today for a month of summer holidays for the kids so am working from home for a day and skyping into the office. summer hols are always fun to work around.
mega-successexy office This is the best term I've heard in a long time. That's what I want to be.
Agreed rusty! Definitely the quote of the week.
Successexy aye? LOVE IT!!!!
In other news, I'm totally jonesing some chocolate covered pretzels at the moment. Bought a bag at Trader Joe's last Saturday and completely devoured them in two sittings.
I'm craving ice cream, FrozFruit bars, flan, strawberry pie, key lime pie, a milkshake, a smoothie, an italian ice...basically anything at all cold and sweet. It's damn hot.
Barring dessert, I suppose it's never too hot for bourbon on the rocks.
hehe...if i ever do achieve this 'mega-successexy' (!!) status of which you speak, you can bring on those snarky emails...i'll take them as a badge of honor.
and thanks, file...now when i take the car in for repairs next week, i can pretend i know what i'm doing. i've been car-less all my life and recently inherited this thing...i know as much about cars as your average 17-yr. old. it's embarrassing. but unlike a lot of my friends, i at least do know how to drive...
rusty, nobody blows the high-pressure hot air quite like you do. :)
my husband had invitations to a museum opening...no sweets, but great drinks, snacks, and art...and now daniel craig is on tv! good night, all.
Deborah Berke is lovely in every way. She's definitely mega-sucessexy, I want to be her when I grow up! (And Chrissie Hynde, too.)
Goodnight, all - 1am is time for bed for me this week.
@ toasteroven - your post sounded like straight up Chinese to me. permaculture? guild? three sisters? it was like you were suddenly talking code to sneak landscape news past the archi-enemy lines.
Also, the very first thing I thought of when I read "food forest" was how I am reading a murder mystery about a mushroom expert who goes foraging in a forest and eats the wrong mushroom and dies. duh duh duuuuhhhh... probably not what you are talking about.
@ erin et al - I literally cannot conceive of how one might ride a bike without a helmet. The couple times I've forgotten mine I've FREAKED OUT. Felt totally anxious the whole ride. Although I know I've heard about how there's apparently debate on the whole helmet v. non-helmet thing?
Did you hear about the biker recently down in SD who was killed on a trail separated and elevated from the freeway? Some lady randomly ran off the freeway, up the embankment, through a chain link fence, and shot across the bike path, and unfortunately someone was on it in the wrong place at the wrong time. That someone was my friend's brother. He was a super experienced cyclist, and helmeted. Sometimes there's only so much you can do.
@ Donna - I have fam in Traverse City. I LOVE it. You should totally move there! Michigan rocks. Also part of the reason I started dating my SO, no joke, was that SO makes incredibly awesome "that's what she said" jokes at exactly the right time. I have snorted water out my nose so many times...
there is no way i'm allowing donna to move to michigan. none.
mantaray, my SO does not enjoy the "that's what see said" lines. which unfortunately I use quite often with all my friends/family etc....
morning all
Friends don't let friends move to Michigan ;o) I love Michigan actually. We used to rent a cabin up on one of the lakes up there every summer as a kid. So many good memories. Such great weather.
Speaking of bike accidents, anyone else been watching the Tour? Talk about some serious carnage. I'm surprised that some of them were able to walk away as unscathed as they were and continue cycling.
three sisters is corn, beans, and squash (although an awesome name for a lesbian organic restaurant). barry - I think it's a little more complicated than companion planting because it involves animals. Right now I'm currently learning about nitrogen fixers... and that concrete foundations make surrounding soil more alkaline. all this is partly due to me figuring out what I want to do with my front and back gardens (we don't have "yards" around here) - but now I'm also really curious about how different building materials affect soil quality. don't you guys know that my thing is buildings, cities, and food?
traverse city - that's michigan's wine country. it's a really beautiful part of the sate - sleeping bear dunes, petosky...
how different building materials affect soil quality
Now *this* sounds interesting, especially if you bring in food and what nutrients a vegetable might gain being planted next to a certain building material: does rebar add iron to tomatoes? Do concrete footings up the calcium quantity of Broccoli? Do beans grown beneath the Bilbao rain runoff have higher concentrations of zinc?! Fantastic!
Ghery used to use lead-coated copper a lot...
yeah and then he complained that it wasn't for sale anymore. funny guy. cadmium panels was probably his second choice.
Hm, I thought it was zinc coated copper, or titanium or something.
Hey, did you guys read this comment over on the developers thread? " ultramodern will always be popular among architects because the style allows any hack to throw together a bunch of random lines and circles" I LOL'd, then made a slightly damning comment, but I'm really not up for the full on spanking that comment deserves. Anyone else feel like taking it on?
bilbao is titanium. disney concert hall is made out of highly polished mirrors and lasers. I think there might be some smoke in there too.
I was thinking of photoshopping a bunch of architects heads onto the characters from a clockwork orange, but I've got work to do today.
toaster, please have your soil tested for lead, especially if planting within 10' or so of a building that may have used lead-paint. Many (sub)urban soils have detectable levels of Pb from pre-1978 gasoline too. Concrete does make soils more alkaline (but this will only impact acid loving plants like blueberries), most veggies are pretty tolerant to the normal range of pH that is found in typical residential settings. Yes, rebar and other metals do add to the micronutrient levels of the soil (some good, some bad) - but tomatoes need more calcium that concrete will add - compost your egg shells (or just sprinkle them on the ground in the garden where the tomatoes will be. Microrhyzial communities are important - you can be mystical about them (like permaculture) or pragmatic. compost makes healthy soil, which makes yummy and prolific veggies.
Very interesting toaster... maybe that's why my tomatoes aren't doing well. Perhaps I need to add some amender to acidify the soil a little more.
Or maybe I'll finishing reading the thread and take Barry's suggestion by amending the soild with some egg shells.
barry - I'm currently using raised beds (made out of untreated cedar) on impervious surfaces and containers for my veggies. I won't plant anything I'm planning on eating until I've finished having my property tested for lead and arsenic - I know the patch of dirt in front of my house is contaminated from a home test. I'm getting both the topsoil and subsoil tested so I know if I have the option of just replacing the topsoil.
I am definitely more pragmatic - but am interested in beneficial groupings so that I don't have to add stuff.
Toast et al this article from NYT today may prove useful/related re: contamination and residential/urban ag To Nullify Lead, Add a Bunch of Fish Bones
wait - is "permaculture" considered mystical - crunchy mother-earth hippy nonsense? I know there are criticisms of the movement (mostly centered around implementation and destruction of existing healthy "non-native" ecosystems), but I haven't heard that one. I'm probably closer to the food sovereignty camp than anything else.
nam - that's aweseome - and it only takes a couple weeks?
crunchy mother-earth hippy nonsense
Didn't say that. But I will say that permaculture isn't always very rigorous from an ecological/scientific perspective. But the weirdness is part of the charm. Permaculture does seem to be more of a cult then other branches of the organic/traditional ag movement.
there seems to be a lot of good news being announce on TC... with that in mind, I'd like to share the best news I got all week... a text from the wife, "Got the stain out of ur metabolism shirt :)"
Life is good.
barry - huh - well... the guy who teaches the local certificate program did look a bit too much like a young, handsome, yoga instructor...
toast at least according to article.
re: permaculture my own feeling has always been along the lines of Barry's. There is a lot of stored/traditional knowledge and interest in things urban agriculture/sustainability in terms of the groups/people I know who are interested/involved with permaculture. At least in my experience though they are focused very explicitly on permaculture not the larger set of issues re: to agricultural urbanism and tend to have/take a more folksy (and perhaps lacking in a "refined" aesthetic and or technical/scientific) understanding/approach.
Toaster - I'm interested to hear how tall your raised beds are and if you've had any problems with your veggies being root bound in the containers. I planted my basil in a smaller pot this year and it needs to be watered ALL THE TIME, which leads me to think it might be root bound. Barry - do you have any insight to this?
I'm toying with the notion of getting rid of all the grass in my front yard and turning it into a veggie/ perenial garden. Fortunately I don't think I'll have the issues this poor woman had, but you never know. I think that's the reason I've held off for so long doing it.
*M, smaller pots = less water available. try repotting in larger containers. you'll see if they are root bound or not as you do this. if they are, gently tease the roots apart. don't freak about running afoul of a local power-hungry bureacrat with a garden - there is no legal standing for the persecution that the women experienced.
oh, today I made my 100th post, and got invited to write a 'text book' by cognella, a publisher that I've never heard about before...
Erin,
I had a guy car door me on Commonweath Avenue in the Back Bay of Boston years ago. It was like slow motion. I saw the door open the guy start to get out and then he retreats to his mercedes and leaves the door wide open. I couldn't swirve into traffic cause it was all buzzing right along and so is did an adjustment and caught my elbow on his car door which flipped me end for end. I got up and went right at him. Called him a few dozen not so nice words....asking him how stupid could you be to not close the car door. Finally I heard him say, son let me take a look at your arm I'm a Doctor. Which I responded well I would rather see your drivers license. Which he produced, we exchanged a few more words and I hoofed it on foot back to the Architectural Office where I was headed at the time. Called a friend and went to the Hospital Emergency Room. Where they determined I had not smashed my elbow....but it sure felt like it. They were a bit baffled by some other items showing up in the x-ray. I told them it was most likely concrete as I had been in a accident where a concrete shut had pinned me against a building and I had almost severed my arm off. So I said, "I could live with a little concrete." My bike was totally trashed, so I had to go out and steal a new one...Just kidding :)
nam are you going all Mayflower Pilgrim on us?
crazy stories snook. yikes
cool about the fish and lead. my father in laws place was part of the land polluted by cadmium from strip mining in japan that lead to something called itai-itai byo, or ouch ouch disease. the soil and fish were contaminated and made for brittle bones so people started cracking (no joke) hence the constant pain. they just finished replacing his soil a few years ago, about 30 years after the disease became an international thing. replaced the soil of his entire farm i think a meter or more deep. they been doing that slowly but surely since ages ago all over the area and only just got to him - his land has been empty all that time. crazy. all for a bit of metal in a hill some miles away.
anyway, fish apparently are not enough sometimes
jump "anyway, fish apparently are not enough sometimes" truth indeed...
snook i am not sure am I " going all Mayflower Pilgrim" on yall?
What i think i was trying to say earlier is that in my experience the people i know into permaculture here or abroad tend to be of the DIYer, Anarcho-progressive, artist sort of lifestyles. While other more "professionals" tend to talk about urban agriculture, sustainable urbanism etc....
nite nite..
my a/c is on the fritz too. i think its the resistor whcih is a cheap fix. it works fine if i am wearing shorts and a tshirt but if i have regullar clothes on it stops blowing after about a minute. fortunaltey its only in the mid 90s here and it looks like rain in the delta.
wow! about your father in law's land, jump.
my whole yard is garden beds, not a single piece of grass. I love it that way.
While the topic of gardening and farming is up, anyone know what to look for in a good water collection barrel? Or have a model to recommend?
vado just so you know I have been enjoying your recent delta updates...
nam...I was thinking of the Indians planting a corn seed along with a fish. It was one of the first things the mayflower people learned from the indians. I wasn't getting snarky..
Hi all. I'm extremely crabby today. Aargh.
snook, didn't take it as snarky just wasn't sure... i do remeber learning about that as a kid...
snook, I'm sorry to hear that. The dooring always scares me, but so far every time I've come close I've yelled (out of pure fear, not even voluntary enough to be trying to have an impact on the situation) and the near-offender has looked up and closed their door upon seeing me coming. So apparently my instincts do me some good.
Feeling very shitty for the past two days, so called the doc this morning and said hey, I don't think I'm supposed to be getting WORSE at this point, so they're trying to fit me into their afternoon. In the meantime, I'm back on the codeine pretty solidly. Weeeeeee
"While the topic of gardening and farming is up, anyone know what to look for in a good water collection barrel? Or have a model to recommend?"
If you want very cheap and easy...take small pieces of landscaping fabric and completely wrap (I used glue and a few zip cords for good measure) them over unglazed clay pots. Then just bury the clay pots in the ground large-hole side up. Cover with dirt or mulch. They'll hold water pretty well and pretty much release it only when the ground becomes dry. Slows drainage from watering too.
If you want to place these in areas with a bit of traffic. Just fill the pots up with a porous rock like lava stone or unpolished limestone. That way the fabric doesn't break or you fall into a hole and twist your ankle.
I came up with this idea because I read that in some parts of the world... clay pots buried in the ground are used for irrigation when surface water isn't available.
Unfortunately, in Florida, having puddles of open water sitting around is a health hazard.
one of the things I'm working on with students at the UMN this summer: http://bikepasture.tumblr.com/
no rain barrels, but we'll have rain gardens and a bunch of drainage tile...
a bright idea for a new page...
James, I need the rainbarrels not just for irrigation, but for getting the moonsoonal rains away from my house's foundation. Nice idea though.
that worked great for us, beccabec. we were looking at $10k+/- to hire a company to waterproof our basement. then we decided to start collecting water for our kitchen garden, bought a $75 rain barrel, and SOLVED our water problem! who knew!
howd you collect the water steven? ie, just from one of the drain pipes was enough?
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