Backyard Project: Pattern Language #167 Six-foot Balcony

Lifting and stacking pavers for reuse in reworked walkways and sitting areas.

Pattern Language #167 Six-foot Balconies, verandahs, terraces, porches, and arcades along the building edge or halfway into it.

The Problem: 'Balconies and porches which are less than six feet deep are hardly ever used.' Pattern Language, p. 782.

Here is the 4-foot deep original guest bedroom patio. The pavers are 1 foot by 2 feet in size. It is not a walkway either because it doesn't lead anywhere. According to the Pattern Language, it wasn't used as a patio because nowhere was it at least 6 feet deep. 

'Balconies and porches are often made very small to save money; but when they are too small, they might just as well not be there. A balcony is first used properly when there is enough room for 2 or 3 people to sit in a small group with room to stretch their legs, and room for a small table where they can set down glasses cups, and the newspaper. No balcony works if it is so narrow that people have to sit in a row facing outward.' p. 783.

Arial view of what is left of the original guest room patio after construction trenches were dug and the river stone garden bed was removed. 

We had reworked some other paved areas to make the walkways more obvious by reducing their width. This one is now 4 feet wide instead of being staggered up to 6 feet wide. This gave us extra pavers to work with elsewhere and a bonus garden bed (yet to be developed).

The new guest room patio is now 6 and a half feet deep and 14 feet wide. The Pattern Language has found 'almost no balconies which are more than 6 feet deep are not used.'  It is going to be interesting to see if this reconfigured patio will be used.

The original patio was hardly inviting. Pattern Language explains why it was not a popular place to stop a while.

'Two other features of a balcony make a difference in the degree to which people will use it: its enclosure and its recession into the building. As far as enclosure goes, we have noticed that among the deeper balconies, it is those with half-open enclosures around them - columns, wooden slats, rose-covered trellises - which are used most. Apparently, the partial privacy given by a half-open screen makes people more comfortable.' p. 783.

Sitting out on this original patio one would feel exposed and vulnerable with the forest on one side and the dark underside of the balcony on the other. The flat wall of the house offers no protection or comfort. These are situational feelings humans still carry with them from hunter/gatherer days.

'Enclose the balcony with a low wall - sitting wall (coming), heavy columns (check - 6" x 6" cedar posts), and half open walls or screens (check - Propagation Room wall). Keep it open toward the south (partial check - it faces south but looks to a large cedar fence made of slats that will be covered in vines, while the east view is out to the forest). p. 784. 

The new patio will not be recessed into the original house but the addition of the Propagation Room has visually extended the building envelop and now gives the feeling of being tucked into a corner of the house.

Here's hoping we got enough of the Pattern Language # 167 incorporated into the design to make this patio a welcoming place for our guests to hang out on while offering privacy, protection and a view.

For the Love of Hydrangeas

Next to the boulder retaining wall coming out from my studio, I have planted a Hydrangea hedge.

It began with an invitation from Barbara G to dig up and take cuttings from her bushes last fall.

I planted the 2 root balls and stuck stick cuttings in the ground and left them for the winter.

Early in the spring they sprouted, grew enormous leaves and flowered profusly throughout the summer into early fall.

Barabara's plants are called 'lace' hydrangeas because the petals come out a few at a time rather than all at once.

They are blue and are likely to stay blue because our native soil is acidic. Pine needles and pine cones from nearby Douglas-fir trees continually fall on the soil keeping it acidic. 

Closer to the Green Shed I want the bushes to be pinker. I have been buying pink flowering plants and after enjoying them inside I have cut them back and planted them filling in the remaining space right up to the Shed. I pour my leftover tea into their soil and have added eggshells to help make the soil more alkaline (and the stalks fo these hybrids stronger) which supports pink flowers. However, most pink plants are now bred to stay pink so these ones are likely to stay the colour I bought.

I'll take a picture next spring to show off how the pink bushes pop against the dark green shed. As the bushes are further away they transistion into blues. This is the plan but I will have wait until next spring to see how things turn out. 

I love hydrangeas as do many of the women in my family. My sisters, mother, aunts and cousins grow magnificent hydrangeas in their gardens wherever they can. Karen, who lives in the mountains of Colorado, can't but I know she would if she could.

I made a series of hydrangea works from thrift store silk blouses.

Earlier posts about making these works here and here.

I gave one to each of my sisters and our mother.

We all remember how our grandmother (our mother's mother) grew magnificent hydrangea bushes that we spend many happy hours playing around.

I have a memory of watching her put some powder into the soil under the plants. She explained to me she was making their colours. It was my first introduction to aluminium ions and soil ph and I have been fascinated ever since.

I think of the hydrangea connecting our different generations. When I see them in my sisters' gardens I think of how our grandmother passed on her love of working with plants. I see I have passed this love on to my daughters.

Backyard Project: Sorting, Recycling, Reusing - the Waste Materials

It is time to sort through the construction waste materials.

Josh took all larger pieces of plywood to use on his next job site. It is useful for making the form work. He didn't have to buy much more plywood for the form work because he reused a lot from the construction of the Green Shed.

All of the smaller pieces of plywood and all painted wood was piled up to be taken away in the garbage trailer. It is all the wood with glues and chemicals that are not safe to burn.

The garbage trailer also took away plastics used to wrap supplies, hold glue and cover curing cement.

I presume it will go to the local landfill where the trailer will be weighted and we will be charged according to that weight.

The left over blasted rock in the background will be used to edge paths.

I used some of the broken pavers as stepping stones in some of the garden beds but most of them, along with the waste concrete, was stacked under the Green Shed's Contemplation Room, there if we ever need it. Because of its weight, it would have cost a lot of money to dispose of in the landfill and there wasn't enough to warrant a dump truck taking it all the way to the quarry for recycling.

Taylor tackled the remaining waste wood pile. He and Josh had reused it so many times on the job the remaining pieces were just smallish off cuts.

I measured the sizes of our 2 fireplaces to find out the maximum length of wood each to take. Taylor then used these 2 numbers to make the best cuts in the remaining wood. Here he is making 2 stacks with longer pieces on the right and shorter pieces on the left.

It was pointed out to me we would be paying for Taylor's time to cut this wood. I pointed out how much it costs to have a pickup truck load of firewood delivered. Also, I was not comfortable with paying for this wood to go into a landfill when we could use it.

Josh used the forks attachment on the Bobcat to move the bundle of long pieces up to the patio area and put it as close as he could to where it was needed.

Ron then moved each piece and re stacked it beside the chimney. Notice the air holes he has left to help keep the wood dry.

The last couple of trees that fell during the winter storms have been cut up, some of it in suitable lengths for firewood. This called 'hucking' the log. These lengths are left to dry out for a bit or not (there are different schools of thought on this) then Ron splits them. He dumps them behind the propagation table and it is my job to crawl under and stack the wood. It will be protected behind the glass and the bottom part will allow air to circulate.

Locating the firewood stack here is another function of the Propagation Room and it solves the previous problem of there being nowhere to stack firewood near where it was needed. The fireplace is inside the house to the left. 

Plus I love the look of stacked firewood as a design feature and for other reasons.

When a tree falls or needs to be cut down for safety reasons we now have a standard order for cutting it up. If it is still standing we ask to leave about 15 to 20 feet standing and hope it will become a wildlife tree. The tree above fell over and its root area will be left as is because the disturbed soil stimulates all sorts of soil organism and plant activity. 

Next the widest part of the trunk is hucked into lengths to later be split for firewood. The next section of about 15 feet is left lying on the ground as a nurse log to support new growth in the forest. The next part is cut into 5 inch rounds and I use these for making 'gardener's paths' to give access into the middle of the wider garden beds. Depending on the length of the tree there may be another section for firewood. The last part of the trunk I use the small sections as edges for garden beds. The branches are cut off and left insitu to protect young plants in the undergrowth eventually rotting down to feed the soil. 

When I explain what I want to the most obliging forester it reminds me of giving the butcher the order when cutting up a whole animal.

Ron is stacking the shorter lengths of construction waste firewood under the inside of the propagation table. I didn't want to be able to see it from the outside thinking it would not look very attractive but he has done such a neat job I think it looks lovely.

So that is the story about managing the waste materials from the Backyard Project construction site.

'Earth Repair' - the Beginings

'Earth Repair' began as a response to what I considered to be an emergency situation.

March 11, 2011 - quoting from my journal -

'Emergency. It has been a long winter here on the island. The deer are hungry. They are eating the bark on my precious Indian Plum. I need to care for this tree. The deer have free choice in the rest of the forest - even my emerging spring bulbs but my Indian Plum is not part of their buffet.

I am placing sacrificial tea cloths over the wounds to protect them. First, I lost my needle - I felt vulnerable and inadequate - I couldn't do what I needed to do because I had lost my valuable tool. Flashback to an earlier time when women depended on their needlework skills to survive. A lost needle was potentially a loss of livelihood translating to an increased risk of not being able to adequately care for her family.

I ran inside to get another needle after I had given up searching in the deep layers of moss and decaying leaves. When I returned with another needle I found my first one hanging by a thread - ties in with that vulnerable feeling again.

I was having trouble holding the cloth in place and sewing at the same time which had lead to the loss of the original needle. Then I heard a distant ambulance siren reminding me this is a triage situation.

Another run inside to get my wooden-based pin cushion, given to me by my mother. A reminder of how important life skills are passed from one generation to the next.

I was now performing the required surgery as I pushed a couple of pins into the bark to temporarily hold the edges of the cloth as I sutured it in place.'

The 'Earth Repair' cloth with embroidery wrought by and unknown hand.

Sutured in place around the wound to stop the deer from eating more of the bark. 

I have since read the Saanich First Nations people make a bark tea as a purgative and a spring tonic. Perhaps that is all the deer were doing because they had upset stomachs after having to eat plants not usually in their diet.

Continuing from my journal entry - 'The tea cloth continues to function - to protect wood and in doing so sacrifices itself to the elements - it was raining as I secured the cloths in place.

Inside the home, the cloth would be used to present food - outside it is now protecting the bark so the tree can get its food....

The cloth has been taken from the horizontal to the vertical plane. Does it still read as a table cloth? It has been taken from a smooth flat object to a wrinkled curved form. Does it still read as a cloth?'

These were musings for the development of work while I was studying for a BA (Hons) in Embroidered Textiles. After 6 years of study, my graduation exhibition work was related to my thoughts and actions on this Day of the Emergency.

Backyard Project - Planting More Trees

Sammy, the owner of Pacific Ecoscapes , is asking me where I want the tree planted in the Gravel Bed Garden.

It is the focal point of the bed so its position is important. I have been holding off from planting more in this bed until I can what the tree looks like. 

We discuss where it could go and settle on its location.

Sammy has to scrape back the gravel, cut a hole in the filter cloth, and dig out the soil below before settling in the tree.

Strawberry Tree/Koumaria/Koumara/Pacific Madrone/Madrona (Arbutus unedo)

We considered many different trees before settling on the Strawberry Tree. It needed to suit the site - sunny, hot, dry thin well-drained soil. It needed to be multi-functional to fit with the permaculture philosophy - edible fruit for birds and me, lots of summer biomass (falling leaves) to act as mulch on surrounding beds over the hot months, falling fruit to feed the soil, a high resting place for birds and a shady spot underneath for me, tannin-rich bark for me to use as a fabric dye. All of these functions made it the winner. Design-wise it is a smaller version of the larger nearby Arbutus (Arbutus mensiesii).

It is an evergreen but like its cousin the Arbutus, it drops half its leaves over the summer. The guava-nectarine tasting fruit takes a year to ripen so the tree has ripe fruit and the next season's flowers both at the same time over late autumn into winter giving birds food into the cold months.

Sammy brought the feijoa/pineapple guava trees for the hedge. I have been growing in pots fig cuttings collected during a Gaia Organic Master Gardener pruning lesson. The soil in the new bed is not yet ready to plant in so Sammy left the plants in their pots and placed them within the hedge area. It is good to be able to better visualise what the hedge will look like.

Fig - Dessert King 

This has proven to be the best cultivar for our climate. Our summers support a plentiful very sweet brebus crop but there are not enough frost-free days to mature the 2nd crop.

Feijoa/Pineapple Guava (Feijoa sellowiana)

This yummy fruit bearing small tree will make up most of the hedge. The green fruit ripens and falls in the autumn. It has soft spiky scarlet flowers which will give the hedge a punch of colour.

Sammy brought and laid some top soil for the 2 meadow beds in front of the studio.

He also planted a native apple tree out the front by the letter box.

So lots of new planting that I now have to keep watered while we wait for the irrigation system to be installed.

Kaipara Coast Sculpture Gardens Exhibition 2016, New Zealand

While in New Zealand recently we visited the Kaipara Coast Sculpture Gardens to see the 2016 exhibition.

This was one of my favourites.

After walking along the hydrangea avenue one sees at the end Janette Cevin's 'Hydrangeas'.

Large-scale hydrangea paintings with their glossy highly decorative metal surfaces covered in acrylic and resin are larger than life and draw the viewer in.

Audrey Boyle's 'Kareao (Supplejack)' is made of steel to mimic nature.

Jane and Mario Downes 'Taraxacum Forest' is also made of steel and mimics nature in an overblown scale.

Marlyne Jackson's 'Beneath the Willow Tree'

Reminiscent of yarn bombing, Marlyne works to express the struggles of recent immigrants...

...making a new life for themselves.

Margaret Johnston's 'Sleep Out' is like a miniature Janet Morton installation...

...until one gets up close to it. 

Margaret remembers childhood summers spent sleeping in a pup tent in the back yard and playing beside the sea. She feels sad about how these activities are now polluted by the huge amount of dumped waste from the telecommunications industries. She knit the tent from this waste.

"What are we doing to our land?"