I've read that Koreans make a strong floral wine from azalea flowers. I'd like to try that some time, but I reckon that it's expensive and difficult to acquire in the US. Anyway, around this same time, Bougainvilleas and Confederate Jessamine also bloom around this time, which sort of indicate the end of winter.
Here's a pic of my little spice garden project. That's an Australian origin bottle brush tree with African irises surrounding it in the cutout. Click on the thumbnail above to see a blowup of the desert rose. I had it under a tree and there were few flowers. Once we moved it into broad daylight (not a bad idea since it's from sub-Saharan Africa), it made some serious floral inroads.
]]>Loading the palm onto the truck (manual shifting which mostly came right back to me after a 10 year space off time) was a breeze gracias al forklift. The fun ended there.
So, Sonia got some neighbors/friends together, and the four of us started sliding the the pallet off the truck, with the palm on top. The weight quickly overwhelmed us, as I half expected and the palm started sliding off the pallet, almost crushing my neighbor from across the street Mark's foot.
I heard him say. "My foot, my foot, foot, foot, foot. Still my foot." So we pulled the pallet away from his foot, which resulted in numerous thorn cuts on our arms and even Brian's, another neighbor's, ear and the top of his head. In fact, my ear was impaled by the sharp thorns as well, a fact I noticed the next day. Sonia devilishly snickered at our cartoon-like ouches.
Ed, a friend who lives a couple miles away looked like a character from the movie Stigmata, as his wrist and work-gloved hands were impaled so many times he had to go wash up. The needles effortlessly puncture standard work gloves.
Finally, after much labor, we rolled the palm into the pre-dug hole and finished the installation. For $100, we could have paid someone to do it. They probably would have been eviscerated as well, but that would be their occupational hazard and choice. Also, they might actually employ some modern simple machines, or even a Bobcat.
The next day, we check on Mark and his foot hadn't even bruised, and we gave him some chocolate and beer to partially compensate for the trauma and to say thanks for volunteering without even being asked.
Morale: plant from seeds. Impatient people (not naming any names here) are dangerous!
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I used stainless ferrules, shackles (1/4"), cable tensioners, and zinc oxide corner brackets. To affix the assembly to the wall, I used tapcons, and where those weren't strong enough or slipped, concrete sleeve anchors were the escalation model. Also had to cut holes in the deck, so a plant could grow. I made two trellises.
Not sure which kind of vine will go here. I'm letting Sonia pick it. Hopefully something drought and cold tolerant and enjoys full sun. So it will probably end up being something that is native to the Brazilian rainforest and needs full understory shade.
Our front yard looked really ugly when we first bought our house. Actually, come to think of it, it still is really ugly. To improve the situation though, we decided to do some zero-scaping: two raised planter beds made out of concrete, mortar, and stone veneer. The following how-to goes through the construction process step-by-step.
Okay, first step: figure out where you are going to put the planter and mark the shape out on the ground. It doesn't matter how you do it. We used gold spray paint to mark the hole, because that's what was available and the local gay flag-twirling corps suggested it.
"Make a hole. Make it wiiiiiiiiide." -from the band Mudhoney's song, "Make It Now". We have sugar sand, and lots of dead/dormant grass roots, so I ran the sand through a sieve to remove the organic material. There were lots of grubs in the sand about 6 inches down, so I threw those into the street. They started walking back to the sidewalk, so I used a samurai-like motion to chop them in half with my trusty garden weasel "Dameon". Then the birds arrived and ate the resulting pavement scorched road pizza.
We used 21" stakes and the thinner masonite of the two available. Shorter ones won't hold up to concrete. Wood screws were drilled to fasten the stakes to the masonite (3 per stake). Don't worry about the screws sticking into the concrete side: they'll come out easily. Overlapping the seams made the trough stronger also. If I could go back, I'd use the thicker of the two masonite sizes available and put the stakes (even a larger thickness) closer together. When the concrete is poured in, it really puts a lot of stress on even a well-built trough, so it's hard to over-engineer the trough. Ours bowed out when the concrete was poured in. We had good luck with preassembling the walls on flat ground, then pounding the stakes, masonite, et al into the ground together.
It comes in a big fat roll with way more than you'll need. Rebar is overkill, because people won't be walking on your planter. If they do, use your leftover rusty rewire and flog them in a gratuitous manner. Get the underlying sand soaking wet so it compacts. I don't know what the hell you do if you don't have sand; probably put down gravel first, dunno. You'll need wire cutters to cut long strips which you'll push into the ground with an epileptic rocking motion. Then you'll snip off parts going above where the concrete will be, and you'll take tie wire and wire the ends together, so they stay put when the concrete is poured.
Follow the concrete instructions. Here we are at work making concrete. Notice how my gloves match my socks. Yes, I'm that good. The big black thing is just a garbage can. Our neighbor Sean helped us with the concrete. He owns the electric motorized mixer, which saved some expense and effort. **Important**: When you pour the concrete, use a shovel to shove into the concrete to remove air pockets. Also, use a plywood backsplash to keep the concrete from pouring outside the trough. After a day of hardening, lightly hose down the wall after removing the masonite, to give the concrete some more moisture.
This is the tricky part. Buy some mason mix. All you have to do is add water, some cement adhesive (latex based?), and optionally, cement dye (read the instructions for all these). The mason mix should have the consistency of peanut butter, because it is the suction between the natural stone, mason mix, and cement that makes it hold initially. Also, clean the dried cement and brush with adhesive before applying the stones.To apply the stones on a vertical surface, butter the back of a stone with the prepared, wet mason mix and push it into the wall.
Update: It's also a good idea to put a dab of foaming Gorilla Glue (TM) or the like. With a strong glue like that of the Gorilla, there is no chance the rocks will pop out, even when walked on. We also have been using this glue to fix any stones that pop off, in situations where we didn't glue them down to begin with.
Repeat 6 stone application process million times until you have a veneer. The tricky part is aligning the stone, unless you precut the stone (we didn't do that, because we wanted a natural look).
We used two types of stone: Black Diver's Rock on the top and Great Lake Flats on the sides. The thinner, the better. 1/2" is too thick on the sides, as it will be too heavy for the mason suction. On the top, you can lay down some mason mix first and press in the stones after, but make sure to get mason mix on the rock sides, not just below, or the rocks won't be held in firmly.
Finished. Now I'm off to get some plants. I'll update this story as they grow. Here are the first two plants:
