Photos from the Fling

For several days last week I was in Asheville, North Carolina for the annual Garden Bloggers' Fling. It was a great opportunity to see old friends, meet new people, talk about the business of garden design and writing, and of course, tour gardens. This year's Fling gave me a lot to think about and no doubt much of that musing will be making its way into upcoming blog posts. In the meantime, here are my favorite photos from the many Asheville gardens we saw:

Handmade Garden Projects: A Virtual Book Tour

I was recently invited by Timber Press to participate in a virtual book tour for the launch of a new book, Handmade Garden Projects, by Lorene Edwards Forkner. Naturally, when I saw the title I leaped at the chance, mainly because I saw it as an opportunity to get a free book about, well, garden projects.

And you all know how I feel about a good project.

By and by a copy of the book arrived in the mail. I had to wait a few days to get a good look at it, though, because there was all this pesky end-o-semester stuff to get out of the way. It wasn't so much an issue about not being able to find time to read the book. It was more that I was a afraid that once I started, I'd want to stop everything and head out to the shop to look for my drill and hammer.

Sure enough, when I did finally sit down and read it, I found the book chock full of good ideas, ranging from easy stuff that can be cobbled together in a few minutes, to slightly more complex projects that will take a while to complete. Even so, each of the projects comes with clear, concise instructions, complete with a materials and tools list, so the beginner should not be intimidated at all to try any of them. In fact, this is a book I heartily recommend to someone who has not done a lot of building and tinkering, as Lorene does a fine job of not only inspiring you to pick up the tools, she walks you through the scary bits so easily you might not even realize you weren't born with a screwdriver in your hand.

Some of my favorite projects include a simple water fountain made from a large pot (how I wish I'd received the book before I went out and bought a pot water fountain!), a cocktail table made out of glass, cobblestones, and the kind of wire used to reinforce concrete, and lanterns made out of canning jars and simple touch lights. My favorite, however, is one of the simplest projects of all--and destined to become part of my own garden: "fireflies" made out of magnets, wafer batteries, and LED lights. I am already planning a summer party, just so I can use these.

One of the things I really appreciated about the book is the use of "found" and recycled materials. Most of the projects in here are very affordable, and give the garden a quirky, artisanal look.

I had the opportunity to email Lorene and ask her a few questions (it is a "book tour", after all), and here they are, along with her replies:

ST: I can trace my own interest in making things to my father, who was an inveterate tinkerer and inventor. What is your own background? What got you interested/started in constructing things?

 

LEF: Earning my crafting “chops” has largely been a matter of economic necessity and “what if” experimenting. I still have the same fascination and preoccupation with making things that I had as a child when I first discovered craft books at my local public library. I also have 2 giant garbage bags filled with shaved wood excelsior in my shed right now; a direct result of this early craft education. I had never heard of this “exotic” material, yet it appeared again and again as a necessary ingredient in all the really cool craft projects.  Note: it’s packing material easily obtained from your local nursery when they receive a shipment of glazed containers from overseas and it’s free! Now to come up with a project that uses excelsior!  Childhood crafting led to a degree in Fine Art where I learned to factor in form, texture, color and form; composition and balance.  But formal training still takes a backseat to childhood exploration.

 

ST: What advice would you give to someone who says s/he is all thumbs and can't build things?

 

LEF: Go loose!  Start on projects that are more process oriented and dig in.  The rustic troughs are really just playing with mud pies and the rough, decidedly non-polished finished project is the best part of the project.  The materials are easily obtained at the corner hardware (although the packaging is such that you’ll have way more than you need to make a few troughs – a perfect excuse to gather some friends and have a mud-pie party!)  Some of my most successful projects came about simply experimenting  with “stuff” I had in the basement or my garden shed, or in response to a need in the garden. Black bamboo poles from a huge stand that “migrated” from my neighbor’s lot became bean teepees, and tomato cages and eventually morphed into a structure so beautiful I’m loathe to plant anything on it because I don’t want to hide it!

 

 

ST: What is your favorite project you've ever made?

 

LEF: So hard to say.  I’m very fond of the flame-free canning jar lanterns which are dead simple and charming in the garden after dark… but my heart is always with the totally silly handmade fireflies.  Not much to look at by light of day – this simple combination of an LED light bulb, a coin battery and a craft magnet are magical after dark!

If you are looking to do a little tinkering this summer, you could do worse than check out some of the ideas in Handmade Garden Projects. At a minimum, you will be inspired; at a maximum, it will keep you off the streets this summer while you build that funky cocktail table.

Garden Blogger Bloom Day

I don't usually participate in the glorious monthly event that is Garden Blogger Bloom Day, started by my friend Carol over at May Dreams Garden, not for any special reason other than that I am a spacey, self-absorbed person and tend to forget trivial things, like, say, dates and stuff.

Anyway, it is the 15th day of the month, when those of us who blog about our gardens are supposed to run outside and take beautiful photos of what is blooming there. As it happens, I was thinking about Carol today because I'm going to see her in a couple of days at the annual Garden Bloggers Fling. The Fling is this amazing, nearly indescribable gathering of garden writers, and is in effect what passes for a conference if you happen to be one of that tribe--only instead of sitting through boring academic papers, we go tour gardens and talk about writing. The academy could take a lesson from this.

So, while thinking about Carol, I also happened to pass by this rather spectacular ice plant, which to my eye looks rather stunning in its big blue pot, and thought, "Aha!"

So there you go. However, I'm not going to crawl around the garden and take any more photos (even though there is quite a bit blooming), as I've got a bit of a wonky back at the moment. Be grateful instead for this small miracle.

In other news: Tomorrow I'll be reviewing this book as part of a virtual blog tour by the author, Lorene Edwards Forkner, who appears to be a woman after my own tinker heart:

It's a book I think people would enjoy and find useful, so check back in for my report.

Moving water in the garden

We've long had a problem with water and ice on our front landing. In the winter, snow on the roof  will melt during the day and run off, forming a sheet of thick, hard-to-remove ice below. I had always planned at some point to add gutters to the front of the house, primarily for the purpose of rain catchment, but because the overhang is actually lower than the eaves, it wasn't going to be an easy solution to direct the water without creating unsightly gutter and downspout lines everywhere.

My solution was to create a gutter for just the overhang, and direct the water down a rain chain, shown here during a recent shower:

But the problem didn't stop there, since a pool of water on the steps could cause just as much trouble in freezing weather as on the landing. So the rain chain feeds water into the blue pot, into which I cut a hole and installed some copper pipe I had lying around, just waiting to be used on a project like this pipe. (Edited to add this information: To drill the hole I used a diamond saw bit you can find in the tile section of a hardware store; these are used to cut holes for plumbing in tiled shower stalls. This bit came with the gray dam you see taped to the pot. The dam is filled with water to keep the bit cool as you cut.):

The pipe is secured to the pot with silicone caulk. I have not completely covered the hole that was in the bottom of the blue pot, which allows standing water to leak out slowly, eliminating the possibility of mosquitoes breeding there. You can see it working here during the rain:

This might create some ice during the winter, but it is on the edge of the steps, so there may be a way I can engineer something that will direct it more to the side. Or, alternatively, I could just plug the hole in winter. 

The pipe then carries the water into one of the xeric beds. It is pretty unobstrusive, but even if it weren't I like the thought of a water-carrying pipe running through a xeric garden. It evokes the historic spirit of desert people, moving water through an arid land:

We've been having some lovely spring showers in the past few days, allowing me to see if the system works, and I'm happy to report that it does. As seen here, the water trickles out of the pipe at the base of some false yuccas:

Et voila. I love a good engineering project.