'Aunt Flow Speaks Out' Has Been Installed

'Aunt Flow Speaks Out,' Kirsten Horel & Lesley Turner; size variable; cotton, silk, linen women's handkerchiefs, cotton thread, earth pigment, nails, notebook, pen; thrifting, laundering, ironing, lettering, painting.

This is Aunt Flow's official photograph.

'Aunt Flow Speaks Out' has been installed.

The Community Arts Council of Greater Victoria (CACGV) is commemorating International Women's Day with the art exhibition "Women Hold Up Half the Sky." It is in the Bay Centre, downtown Victoria, on the 3rd floor, next to Club Monaco.

The exhibition is on from February 25th until March 13th.

The Installation

The curators, Stepanie and Brin, have given Aunt Flow 8 feet. The ceilings must be 12 feet high so this is going to be the largest Aunt Flow has ever been. The bigger the better for Aunt Flow.

Step 1. The Template

Pin up the template and mark the wall through the holes.

The template is made from an on-point interfacing. The red dots are around holes in the template where I can make a pencil marks on the wall.

Step 2. Nail a handkerchief with a tag over each pencil mark.

Step 3. Place the plinth in the centre with the book and pen on top.

Complete.

Backyard Project: Shoe-design Garden Beds

The next garden room Tom is going to construct is made up of raised rock beds. I showed him a print made from the sole of my shoe and said it was the type of shape I wanted for the beds.

He said, "OK" and away he went to work.

He removed the existing rocks and dug out the soil.

He placed the large rocks to make a meandering curving raised edge.

The 2 lines of smaller rocks in the front of this image define the gravel bed garden.

Tom placed the rocks following the pattern of the shoe sole. He placed decomposing logs in the bottom of each growing area then filled the spaces with the soil mix. 

This garden bed shape is known as a key-hole design. 

It has many benefits including increasing the area available to plant, reducing the amount of real estate given to non-productive paths, increasing the amount of 'edge' where plant growth is most prolific and making ergonomically efficient areas to work in.

 The large rocks act as heat sinks which will warm the soil and extend at each end the length of the growing season. 

The beds are aligned north-to-south to capture the maximum amount of sun. They have been built in this particular spot because a sun-shade analysis of the back yard area showed this area receives up to 11 hours of sunshine each day at the height of summer. 

The raised beds mean we can work beside them while standing, saving our backs. The beds are at a maximum of 8 feet wide which means all of the growing area can be reached by my outstretched hand. There is no need to walk on the soil and compact it.

This image gives a better idea of the different levels that now cover what was a vast expanse of level lawn. Design wise, changing levels and curving lines are visually much more interesting.

Backyard Project: Prep for Next Room Construction

Preparation for the construction of the next room included Tom doing a few tasks while he could still get the excavator into the areas.

One task was to lift the 2 Garden Towers off the balcony. Ron had removed all the railing in preparation for the conservatory construction which made lifting the Garden Towers easier.

For Tom, it was just a matter of lifting them off the balcony then rolling them off the bucket. Without the excavator, it would have been a major task requiring lots of preplanning and manpower (not girl power. I don't like doing those sorts of tasks).

The deer will be delighted when they discover these 2 picnic baskets set out for them. I am resigned to the plants all being eaten to nubs. We will replant the towers once the deer fence has been built.

In the meantime, the girl power is scraping up the last of the compost from the compost area and spreading it on existing garden beds. I didn't want to lose the compost we had made.

The critical task in preparation for the construction of the next garden room is the placement of needed materials where they are both accessible and out of the way of the construction.

Tom piled the decomposing logs on one side of the track downhill from the next lot of beds.

He piled up his specially mixed soil on the other side of the track.

More truckloads of rocks were delivered. Tom spoke to the driver each time. I think he asked for bigger rocks with every load. One truckload had only 8 rocks because they were so big. The rocks come from a construction site not far away where they are blasting out a mound to level the ground. With the rocks being local in origin they match perfectly the  rocks used in the original construction of the house.

Tom's next task was to remove all of the existing plants I had tagged with tape because I wanted to  keep them for the new beds. He put them out of the way of the construction area.

Let the construction of the Raised Rockbeds begin.

Real-time Update: February 2016

Most of my blog posts are about events that happened some time ago. I focus on telling a chronological story because my blog is a journal.

However, I have decided to make the occasional post in real-time to document what I am up to in the present. So here goes - my first Real-time Update.

In my studio, I am working with buttons, lots of buttons. After sorting washing and placing them, I am sewing them onto a ground with the machine. 

Outside the studio, in the studio beds, the first of those spring bulbs I planted as soon as the garden beds were constructed, have popped out of the ground. They are the hyacinths.

About the same time as planting the bulbs, I planted a green manure mix of seeds and compost over the hugelkultur beds. The seeds the birds didn't take have germinated and the remnants the deer have left after their nightly grazing have turned into a green fuzz now the days are warmer.

We have had 40% more rain this winter than in any other we have experienced since we moved here. The damp conditions are ideal for rotting away the leaves while leaving their skeletons. I am collecting some of them for a work called  'Earth Repair.'

So that is what has been happening inside and outside the studio, today.

Backyard Project: Gravelbed Garden

Here I have laid out with tape the boundary of the next area Tom will work on, the Gravelbed Garden.

The Backyard Project is made up of a series of interconnecting rooms. This is a concept from Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language research where each room is considered a centre.

It is the use of centers, and the knowledge of the fundamental role that emerging centers play in the evolution of a design, which gives the design process an orderly character, that can succeed, and allows you to keep a clear head while you are doing it, and a clear mind about the long term target, and the immediate action you must take, at each step, step by step, that will guide the design towards a successful end-state.

He explains and expands on this important design principle of centres in his books 'The Nature of Order, volumes 1 to 4.

First Tom works on the pathway which is one of  the boundaies defining the Gravelbed Garden room.

Tom lays down and compacts a mixed-size gravel base for the path.

Next he turns to his pile of smaller rocks and starts sorting them by shape. He mentally names the piles according to their function.

Then he begins the slow task of selecting the right rock and putting it in its place. The task demands a lot of focused attention.

Tom was wiped by the end of the day. It took him another half day to finish placing the rocks.

I can see in my mind how it will look when it is planted and surrounded by the other interconnecting rooms. It looks fabulous. Once again Tom did an amazing job.

Backyard Project: Advantages of Hugelkultur Beds

The three finished Hugelkutur beds

The nearest one is in the shape of a water drop. The one beside it a feather and the far one a leaf. But more about their shapes later.

I have placed a temperature probe in one of the beds to monitor the soil activity. The logs in the centre of the bed will slowly break down and provide food for the plants. The logs will also act like a sponge and soak up a huge amount of water that will be accessible to the larger plant roots.

Tom gently packs the sides to make the beds stable. The slope reduces compaction of the soil, a major problem in garden beds. The slope also acts to greatly increase the surface area available to plant. Another plus is raised beds are so easier on the back when working on them than conventional garden beds.

The beds are orientated in a north-south direction to get the warming sun on the plants all day. The curved shapes with drier top areas and wetter lower areas make for micro-niche growing areas to suit a wide range of plants. 

During the first year while the green manure crop is growing, I will spend time observing the movement of the sun and identifying these niches while planning what to plant where in the second year. I think I have the patience to wait.

Tom laid down the base for the path to the studio then placed a layer of top soil either side for the studio lawn. The place in front of my studio doesn't look like a construction zone anymore.

Backyard Project: Hugelkultur Bed Construction

Here is Tom making soil to place in the garden beds. With the bucket, he scoops and fluffs up a mix of top soil planted with a green manure crop, compost, crushed rotten logs and shredded prunings.

Making Hugelkultur Beds

The Huglekultur Bed gardening concept was developed in the Austrian mountains by Sepp Holtzer.

This is how Tom makes them.

First he scrapes out a trough within the shape I have marked out with wool (see the centre bottom in above image). Then he fills the trough with logs (see the top in image above).

He covers the log pile with the growing medium he has mixed up.

Then he adds more logs on top.

He covers the logs with the soil mix and shapes it to the outline I laid out. 

Finally, he gently pats the soil in place with the excavator bucket so the raised bed holds its shape.

Tom made 3 Huglekultur beds this afternoon and in so doing transformed this area of the back yard.

Food Forest:Life in Syntropy

An inspirational video as we work on Phase 1 of the restoration of our property.

Backyard Project: Studio Garden Beds

Ron cuts a log to size with the chainsaw.

Tom places it to make the first side of the raised beds beside the studio porch.

He has also begun the foundation of the path leading to the studio.

He uses the hand-like attachment to nudge the log in place.

Tom selects another log from his sorted piles.

Ron cuts it to size.

Tom mixes up different materials to make a rich soil.

Two bucket scoops of soil and the bed is full.

In less than an hour, the 2 studio raised beds have been made.

Another hour later I had them all planted in pink, white and purple spring bulbs. I want to see some colour come spring. I will probably move the bulbs elsewhere later because spring bulbs alone don't make a self-supporting ecology of plants.

Ron is spreading foundation gravel for the path under the arcade.

It was an excellent morning's work on the Backyard Project.

Backyard Project:Studio Retaining Wall Pops up Like a Mushroom

A retaining wall is needed to stabilise this slope.

First Tom steepens the slope by digging out the extra soil which will go elsewhere.

The first rock is placed.

The second rock is manoeuvred into the right position.

Before long I can see from my studio window the first layer of rocks is place.

Previously Tom had sorted all of the rocks according to the shapes of their surfaces, putting them into his building block categories.

By early evening, there is a new retaining wall in place.

Tom has placed the rocks together as though they were an interlocking puzzle. It looks as though the surfaces have been cut to fit together.