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I have been wanting to make an outdoor table for SWMBO for a long, long time. I had this idea for a cross between a planter and a table. I wanted it modern and classic, solid and simple. It worked out rather well. Too well in a way, since after I made the basic framework, SWMBO declared it finished. So it will never be a planter as well as a table.
I am still working on the look and feel of the Tejas Art Movement, but I think this belongs in it. Or is it still the Tejas art conspiracy since the numbers are small. Maybe it is still just a plot, in any case, you can look at this and say, early Tejas art style! No extra charge for the grandiose. It is all part of the service!
Above are all the parts cut out and ready to use.
Six of each, table top, horizontal brace, angled leg, straight leg, and bottom plate.
Here are the critical components to keep everything together, lots of screws treated to survive cedar, and some home roasted Tanzanian pea berry coffee.
Here is the tool that will put it all together, this screwdriver would be the one power tool I would find hard to give up.
On the right are two of the vertical T sections that usually support my planters. In this case the top is much wider, so I needed to alter it to support a wider top. The one on the left is the modified support.
Here is the gimlet I used when I was worried that the wood might split.
Here is the udon egg drop soup my wife brought to me while I was working!
A bit of basil, pepper, Vietnamese celery and some oregano made it perfect.
Here are a bunch more of the supports or legs. The legs consist of a bottom plate to hold them together, a thick vertical beam and an angled beam. The angle I used is nine degrees.
The bottom plates are just bits of left over cedar scrap, I planned to have them covered by dirt, but now I should probably trim them for appearance sake.
Now that the legs are done, they get joined to the table top.
Before adding the horizontal brace here is what it looks like under the table.
Here it is with the bracel
After joining it all together, here is the finished table.
If you want to see it close up and personal click on the picture below!
A simple enough project, but it uses a lot more wood that when I make a tool.
Bob
As the election of 2008 comes close, this is my attempt at a subtle statement of support.
I was out collecting seeds in the garden, and maintaining a presence to keep the hawks away, when my delightful wife brought me supper. A simple plate of spaghetti, noodles, tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese, is a delightful and simple meal. When you add a few embellishments from the garden it becomes sublime.
A cherry tomato, a stalk of celery, a couple of strands of garlic chives, a ripe red jalapeno, a sprig of basil and a sprig of mint all added to make it a delight. Since each of these additions was picked fresh from the garden right there, since they are all grown naturally with no pesticides, this was a meal impossible to obtain, even in fine restaurants that I could hardly afford.
Will the Autumn wind blowing through the dappled willow shade, again the ambiance was sublime.
I did pause to take a few photos, such golden moments make life fulfilling.
While my salary has not kept up with the cost of living, the cost of gasoline, and the cost of food, I am doing better than a lot of folk, who have lost their jobs or have high medical expenses. Odd that the cost of food and fuel, are no longer used as part of the cost of living calculations, this does not seem quite honest to me. It seems as if someone knew that they were going to go up out of proportion and would rather not have people know that their fellow countrymen were becoming impoverished.
It seems that the EPA has been covering up evidence regarding the death of bees. Colony Collapse Syndrome directly effects me, my crops and the colonies I have tried to keep and lost. There is a strong prevailing Southern wind that crosses rice fields and cotton fields before it reaches me. If these lingering pesticides in minute quality have been causing my bees to fail, and the native wild bees to suffer, then the EPA has been corupted to destroy what it was created to protect.
Yet I hear people complain that our government coddles us. 700 billion in debt to coddle the wealthy and I hear of no such complaint.
So now I will head back out to my garden, a lovely place, but perhaps one that is not as pesticide free as I might like, due to the EPA and Bayer CropScience. When I am out in my garden I will forget that I do not have twenty healthy bee hives on my property. I will entirely forget the cost of bee suits, smokers, foundation wax, colonies, and extractors. I know what a bee hive used to produce for me. I know the delight of waterlily and wild flower honey. These days I get a few pounds at most before a colony fails. These days, I don’t have bee colonies swarming and making more and more colonies if I do not remove honey fast enough. I miss having stacks of five gallon buckets filled with crystallized honey.
So now you know how I have already voted.
Bob
Zip lock bags are pretty much the rage for seed storage these days. However, they are quite inferior in some ways. They keep moisture in, so they can reduce the storage life of seeds and they can promote mold. For keeping moisture out, they are great.
The best initial packet is a paper one. After the seeds totally dry, then putting them in a ziplock is nice, especially if you plan to freeze them.
Here is how I make my seed packets. These things work great, they can even hold flour without leaking, and still be opened and closed back again.
First you take a sheet of nice fairly heavy weight paper.
Then you fold it in half
Then you fold the free edges over.
If you have really fine seed, then you should fold that over one more time.
Then you flip it over, and fold an angle down on the corner.
The edge that was folded over once or twice is the edge being folded over.
You do this on both ends.
When you flip it back over, it looks like this.
Then you fold the points under the flap.
The finished product looks like this.
It is easy to label. To fill it, you unfold one end, and open it up!
Here is the open end, I just put a bunch of okra seed in it.
Then you fold it back down.
All done!
These packages are inexpensive, quick to make, can be opened and closed, and seeds can still continue to dry while in them.
Bob
Tobacco is an amazing plant. The seeds are tiny, dust really. It is not the easiest plant to start. It needs really rich soil and moisture. But you don’t want any mold. The seeds are tiny, and the plants at first are so amazingly tiny. They have tiny roots and can dry out in a very short time. So the soil has to be damp. The plant may double in size in a week, but still it is too tiny to have deep roots. You have to be extra careful watering. Finally it gets to be an inch or so long and now you have an over crowded pot. Very overcrowded. So you transplant them out. If you were able to keep them alive this long, you probably won’t have any more issues with them. after they get about a foot tall, they are one of the toughest plants in your garden.
Here is one as tall as me in flower.
Here are some seedpods on a plant about eight feet tall.
Carefully I snap off the dry pods, trying to leave the rest of the plant alone. It is easy to take still maturing pods off if you are not careful.
Here are some pods in a bowl.
This is about a fifth of a single plants worth of pods. A lot of the seed has already shaken out. No worry, there is still lots of seed.
After shaking the pods a bit, this is what I got.
I did mention that they were tiny.
Some of the pods still had seed in them so I pinched the tip of the pod off. In the center of the photo, the open ended pod or pod pair is dark inside due to the mass of loose seed within.
By pouring the seed through a screen, you can remove some of the chaff.
Here is the final harvest from one fifth of one plant.
This is a lot of seed. Almost all of them will sprout, and they will keep for years. After sprinkling them on fine rich damp soil, most of them will sprout.
This particular variety is a Native Indian variety. I am still working on my curing method, I don’t have a sweat lodge to do it right, so I am still experimenting.
I can afford to experiment, I just gathered seed from about thirty more plants.
Bob
I enameled several steel slabs for etching in vinegar. When I went to scribe them, the enamel chipped off in large chips. The slab that I did not degrease the chips came off as sheets, but even where the slabs were treated to perfection, the enamel flakes off too large. I need to find a better enamel for the job. One that will allow me to scribe a fine line and not chip out large. Any suggestions out there?
Bob
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