Here it is, finally done, the new patio! You may recall the old one, which was too small to be of use but, more importantly, installed so that with each flash rain that overflowed the gutter the rain was funneled into the basement. As a result, when the thing was demolished, we found a rotten …
Category Archives: garden structures
New Front Patio
The front of the house has been on our list for quite a while (cf. this blog post), and now we’re finally doing something about it. The little balcony up front 1) was too small, a mere 2 1/2 feet deep, 2) was darn ugly with cemented red brick and a cement rim, 3) had …
Summer Solstice Work
On the Summer Solstice we didn’t just demolish our Earth Oven, we did a lot more work. I plugged the last holes (I hope) in the rabbit proof fence around the veg garden. We swept and tidied the backyard and patio. Amie and I planted the flowers we got from the garden center. A couple …
Remembrance
Amie and I made this little altar. We are collecting small momentos (like feathers) and printing out pictures of animals we love who have died – human and not alike. There’s no plan, just to have it be a place for remembrance. We’ll see how it develops. The little statue inside was made a long …
Hornet’s Eggs
Today we took the floppy plastic off the hoop house. We want to re-bend the hoops, because most of them have un-bent themselves so much that at the top they meet in a point, which cuts into the plastic. But we’ll only do that next weekend. In the intervening week I hope the rain will …
Earth Oven, Phase 7: Patching up, and Pizza
The Earth Oven series: foundation base hearth thermal mass first drying fire and door arch insulating layer and chimney Patching up, and first pizza! The oven mud could have been more clay-ey, but most of the oven has held up well. Not so the part that wasn’t as compacted (it being over the 0pening) Â and …
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Gorgeous Day for Baking Cookies
“Mama, can we bake cookies?” Because I suspected that the oven is still too wet to retain enough heat, we put the cookie tray right on the coals (which is cheating, really). The thermometer went up to 400 and then freaked out. Â Cookies came out a little burned but nice and smoky! Steam rising …
Earth Oven, Phase 6: Insulating Layer and Chimney
The Earth Oven series: foundation base hearth thermal mass first drying fire and door arch insulating layer and chimney Patching up, and first pizza! Advice for the novice bricklayer: when building an arch, when done, remove supports and then let cement dry. You guessed it, when removing the supports under my hastily built arch, the …
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Earth Oven, Phase 5: First Drying Fire and Door Arch
The Earth Oven series: foundation base hearth thermal mass first drying fire and door arch insulating layer and chimney Patching up, and first pizza! Today we dug out the sand form. We peeled off the newspaper and checked out the surface on the inside. It’s pretty smooth. After that, we lit a fire, just a small …
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Earth Oven, Phase 4: Thermal Mass
The Earth Oven series: foundation base hearth thermal mass first drying fire and door arch insulating layer and chimney Patching up, and first pizza! Today we worked on the oven again. Rain threatened but never materialized. It made for a warm, overcast day, just perfect for some more or less hard outdoor work. First we …