Each Little World

Which side are you on?

Friends who support the efforts to recall our nefarious governor recently asked me where I got my yard sign. I had seen these around town and finally stopped and walked up to one in someone else's yard so I could read the small print. You can order the signs on-line in two sizes via United Wisconsin. The smaller one (18" x 24") leaves out the word "Scott." But we live on a busy street and I wanted the message to be easily visible, so I got the big one (24" x 36"). They are delivered with a metal H-frame; one end slides up into the poster and the other goes into the ground. Mine arrived in under a week. 

The web site "Political Loud Mouth" offers an amazing array of flyers and posters downloadable for free. They also sell related items like t-shirts and bags. The two images below are some of my favorites because the old-fashioned illustration style — kind of WWI — appeals to me. But there are plenty of more contemporary images and a number of different political movements are covered, including gay marriage, Planned Parenthood, Wisconsin and assorted state protests. Even though one of the strenghts of the Wisconsin movement has been its homemade posters, these are pretty cool! You can check out their site here. 

My Garden Odyssey: Tea house stucco, Pt. 3

PART 3: ADDING COLOR AND CLEAN-UP

HE SAID: At the end of the last post I was applying the brown coat and doing test colors for the final coat on the outside.

In the picture above you can see that I've added another color over the first on my test panel. There are additional colors on the other side. The Quickcrete product I was using suggested adding one 10-oz bottle of pigment to one 80-lb bag of mix. To do my tests I would add 1/2-oz of color to 4-lbs of concrete mix if I wanted to test a straight color. My choices were buff, red, grey, terra cotta and brown. If I wanted to mix two colors I'd divide the 1/2-oz of color proportionally. I borrowed the kitchen scale and a set of measuring spoons to keep the proportions accurate.

However, despite all my charts and careful calculations I still managed to screw up the first panel I did. In this picture you can clearly see the difference between the far right panel and the others. I had measured out tablespoons instead of ounces and ended up with a surface that showed more of the grey stucco mix. Fortunately Linda had reminded me to start at the back of the tea house where mistakes would show the least.

On the plus side, I decided that the "mistake" would make a good color choice for the interior of the tea house. It would be a softer, less intense color in the enclosed space.

The exterior finished at last! We were very please with the way it looked. The color was very much like a number of Japanese tea houses we had seen in our books. The texture of the surface had a pleasing, irregular, weathered look. That was partly due to a technique I used called a "heavy float." That involved using a rubber float or trowel over the surface while it was still a bit wet causing the sand in the mix to rise to the surface.

I was pretty tired by this time and toyed with the idea of closing the building up and waiting for Spring to finish the interior. But taking a day or two off renewed my enthusiasm. I also thought the interior would be easier. Silly me!

First of all, working with ladders, tools, and plastic sheeting in the restricted space made planning and clean-up all that much more difficult. And because there were structural elements inside that I had to work around, I found myself engaged in some fairly involved gymnastics to reach areas under the eaves. Although it was good working off of the level surface of the floor instead of the sloping landscape outside, I discovered a serious disadvantage. On the exterior, because I was standing below the bottom of the wall I was working on, I didn't have to bend very low to apply the stucco. On the interior I was applying it a couple inches from the floor. I hurt in new places after a day of working on the interior.

The tokonoma and storage area required stuccoing free standing panels framed by round timbers. They involved extra masking and care to follow the irregular edges. Also working in the confined spaces meant having to take special care not to mar newly-covered adjacent surfaces.

I mixed a warm grey for the color coat inside the tokonoma display area to set it apart from the rest of the interior space. This was also the only area of the building where I used a white stucco mix as apposed to the grey mix on the rest of the building. The white base gives color a little more intensity. (I hadn't ordered the white mix, but they sent me one bag by mistake. Another happy accident.)

This winter I plan to work on my designs for windows and doors. I also plan to look for someone with more skills and tools to help me with the cabinet work for the interior. The roof still needs copper for the ridge and I think I've found a good person to supply me with gutters. There is still a lot to do, but with the stucco finished the worst is behind us.

An account of this project wouldn't be complete without talking about clean-up and waste. Whenever I cleaned my tools I would store the wash water in 5-gallon buckets until the solids settled out and then re-use the clear water. As much as possible the clarified water I didn't need went on the garden. 

Used plastic sheeting, leveling boards, piles of masking tape, all added up every day. A lot of it could be thrown out with the normal weekly trash; but some things, like the 200-lb test panel, could not. It took more than a little effort with a heavy maul and wire cutters to break it into pieces I could handle.

The panel, concrete solids, as well as a number of other heavy items that had been accumulating in our yard all went in the truck to the the Dane County landfill. It cost $22.00 to dispose of 720-lbs of stuff. I still have a few tools to clean and put away, but I can look forward to winter with a real feeling of accomplishment this year.

My Garden Odyssey: Tea house stucco, Pt. 2

PART 2: TOOLS AND TECNIQUES

HE SAID:

Everything takes longer than you think it will. This seems to be a universal truth when it comes to projects, big or small. However, I've found that time spent preparing is always well worth it. "You Tube" proved to be a very useful source of information on the technique of stucco. And the Portland Cement Association provided me (for a price) a booklet called the "Portland Cement Plaster/Stucco Manual."

Another rule is that the right tools, and quality tools, will make the job a lot easier. The stucco manual provided me with a list of the tools I would need for the job: hawk, floats, scarifier, corner trowel, darby. I, of course, was unfamiliar with many of these tools and had no idea where to find them, but a short time with the yellow pages and $150.00 set me right up. The clerk at the construction materials company said he could find someone to help me if I got into trouble and wished me good luck.

I decided that another useful expenditure of time would be to do a test panel to hone my non-existent skills. In the picture above is the 2-foot by 5-foot wall section I built to practice on.

And here I am only looking like I know what I'm doing. The first thing I realized is that cement is heavy! The second bit of insight I gleaned is that applying stucco is not like brushing on paint. Not only is it hard to hold up ten pounds of stucco on a hawk for long periods, but it takes a lot of effort to force the mix into the lath hard enough to make it adhere to the wall.

While planning the project I thought of renting a cement mixer from Home Depot. You can rent it by the hour, day or week. Since I thought it would take more than a few days to complete the job I considered renting it for an entire week. Had I gone with that idea it would have been a financial disaster. As it turned out, even if someone had done all mixing for me, I physically couldn't apply more than four 80-pound bags a day — and I needed 50 bags to finish the job. Under the brown tarp above are 4000 lbs of stucco mix!

Having gathered tools and materials, practiced my technique, and screwed up my courage, I started on the tea house itself.

In this shot you may be able to see the stainless steel wire tie that I spoke of in the previous post — just below and to the left of the right side blue nail head. I also used screws along the edges (near the other nail) to hold the entire panel centered on the framing.

Here you can see the first coat of three, the "scratch coat," on the panel with the circular window. In order to make a tape mask prior to putting on the second or "brown coat" of stucco, I had to build a jig to locate the center of the window. Then, using a pencil and a rotating beam, I was able to establish a circular line around the frame of the window to stucco to.

After drawing the pencil line I cut the tape with a mat knife and peeled off the outside portion of the tape.

I could then stucco over the frame, up to the tape line, securing the window frame into the wall structure.

The stucco manual said that I should make sure the material cured slowly by keeping it moist. I did this by misting the surface periodically with a garden sprayer and also by covering it with plastic to keep the water from evaporating too quickly.

In the end it took about ten weeks to stucco the tea house, but much of that time was spent cleaning tools, hanging plastic sheeting, applying masking tape to protect the wood, and moving scaffolding necessary to reach the higher areas of the walls. I'm still a little amazed that, given my makeshift efforts to level my work platforms, I didn't fall off the narrow plank I spent so much time working on.

The sprayer I used to ensure slow curing.

In this shot you can see the exterior with its first coat complete. It was time to start thinking ahead to the third and final coat — the "finish coat" or color coat.

As I worked on the brown coat on the tea house I also started making color tests on the practice panel.This step proved to be extremely important. I only had five shades of colorant available to me and no idea how they would look when mixed with stucco. Also, the color when first applied looked nothing like the color of the coat once it was dried — which took a couple of days. 

My Garden Odyssey: Tea house stucco, Pt. 1

We wrote 36 Garden Odyssey episodes describing the process of designing and constructing our gardens. We're still on that journey but we've given up the numbering system! That said, this is the first of three posts describing the process of covering the tea house with stucco.

HE SAID: We planned from early on that there would be a "tea house" located at the top of the rise near the upper pool. It's indicated in the plan below by the small black rectangle on the upper right. (The large black shape in the center is the house and deck).

While we worked on the pond and other structures in the garden, I went through a whole series of design ideas for the "tea house." Sometimes it took the form of a tool shed; sometimes a roofed bench. At least one design combined the two.

Eventually there came a time when I had to make a decision. After working with a mock-up made of a few blocks and boards to get a sense of an appropriate size, I committed to a 7 x 9 foot building. 

From the beginning I pretty much made it up as I went along. There were constant adjustments based on standard sizes of materials. For instance, I didn't want to have to cut any of the tumbled, colored cement blocks I used for the foundation. So their size determined the final footprint.

As much as I might have liked to use traditional Japanese joinery to construct the frame, I knew my carpentry skills were not up to it. But about this time, I inherited a radial arm saw from my father that allowed me to make a reasonable facsimile of traditional joints.

Roofing the tea house with cedar shingles was also a challenge for me. I'm grateful for all the great information available on the internet. I'm not sure I could have managed this project without it. An interesting side note on the roof: because the underside was going to be exposed, I used four different lengths of roofing nails, depending on the thickness of shingles in any given spot, so the nails wouldn't poke through.

After doing the mockup in 2004, the roof in 2006, and making little progress in 2007-8, I was finally able to install the 2-inch pink styrofoam in the walls in summer of 2009. I then made temporary windows of 1 x 2 inch frames covered with plastic sheeting to fill the window and door openings. This protected the interior from the elements — and squirrels — for the next two winters.

My concept was to fill the 3 and 1/2 inch wall spaces in the timber frame structure with a "sandwich" made of 2-inch styrofoam with a 3/4-inch layer of stucco on each side.

The only place I had seen something like this was in factory made panels that would be assembled on site. There was little or no information about how to do what I had in mind. Once again I found myself making it up as I went along.

The problem was how to get the stucco to adhere to the styrofoam and how to get the whole sandwich to stay in place.

I started by "nailing" expanded diamond lath to all the styrofoam surfaces, inside and out, with plastic headed nails. The lath has a proper up and down as well as a back and front. If you put it on wrong the stucco will tend to fall off when you try to apply it.

Everything seems to be harder and take longer than you expect. Cutting the lath to fill all of the odd spaces on the tea house was definitely hard on my hands; but over several weeks I got it all cut and installed.

The plastic headed nails I used to hold the lath in place on the styrofoam were only temporary. They didn't have enough holding power in the insulation to be of much use in holding the stucco on. To create the "sandwich" I drilled sets of holes through the styrofoam and tied the interior and exterior lath together with loops of stainless steel wire. I made a wire loop approximately every square foot. This may have been excessive, but I figured better too many than too few.

The tea house nearly ready for stucco.

. . .

SHE SAID: For readers using the metric system, 1 inch = 2.5 centimers and 1 foot = 0.3048 meters to give you an idea of the size of the elements that Mark is using.

My Garden Odyssey: Tea house update

SHE SAID: One of the benefits of creating a master plan for our garden is that there is always a project or two or ten waiting for us to tackle. Some can be done in an hour or an afternoon or are on-going for far longer than we ever imagined. Our back fence and gate took three years to build. On the other hand, it is gorgeous and has become a major feature of the garden and well worth the time, effort and money.

The fence from our neighbor's side (the gate is open and not visible).

Designing and building a Japanese-influenced tea house is the current long term project that Mark is engaged in. I am engaged in keeping up his spirtis when they flag, feeding him, and parking my car in the driveway instead of the garage which is a summer construction workshop. When I say "long term" I am talking seven years. You read that correctly: seven years! One of the great advantages of digital cameras and garden journals is that one can go back and see what you did when.

2005: Design the tea house structure, construct the foundation and the basic framework of the building.

2006: Add the roof and shingle it.

2007: Record rainy summer and exhaustion from the previous two summers meant no tea house work done. Instead Mark created a sloping gravel path from the Moon Garden to the West Gate. (Every area in the garden is named).

2008: I lost my job, we traveled to visit family and friends and Mark's mom moved from her little house on the Mississippi to Madison. We enjoyed the garden as a refuge and didn't do any extra projects!

2009: The pink insulation board walls of the tea house finally go up and its ultimate shape is much more obvious. Mark did a lot of work on the tea house in addition to converting the back garden paths from bark to gravel.

2010: Mark re-built the first stone wall he ever constructed which fell down at the end of the winter. And he worked with the contractor on a major interior re-modeling project.

2011: Mark retires and can garden full-time! First he replaces the front bark paths with gravel and then he begins the final work on the tea house. But I will let him tell you all about that himself.

For those who are interested, a complete description of constructing the foundation, the structural elements and roof can be found here. And Mark's explanation of putting up the Styrofoam walls and cutting windows and doing the interior structural work can be found here. You can also read posts about doing the back path, the front path and the remodeling.

To read the entire Odyssey of our gardens, click on My Garden Odyssey in the categories list.

Shopping in Spring Green

Last Saturday we went to the 18th Annual Fall Art Tour that snakes through the open studios of artists in Southwestern Wisconsin. It was a gorgeous day; I'm sure exactly what the organizers hope for each year. In addition to looking at (and buying) art, we made a point of stopping at the new independent bookseller in Spring Green: Arcadia Books. It's located on the ground floor of a beautifully restored 1872 post office building. And it has everything you want in a good bookstore: a wide array of subjects and titles, pleasant staff, framed New Yorker posters about books and reading, high ceilings and uneven old wood floors, food, coffee, and wine and beer. I could practically live there! 

While the food is geared to carryout customers, there were two soups and fabulous mini quiches (Caprese and Lorraine the day we were there). You can also pick an entree from the cooler, they heat it up for you and everything is served warm and toasty. I had curried carrot soup with the Caprese quiche and Mark had chicken fried rice. Everything was delicious. Also on the menu are sandwiches, wraps, salads, and desserts. Then we grabbed lattes to drink while we browsed.

I found the new Jane Hirshfield poetry book, "Come, Thief," which I had read about in the New York Times but did not have much hope of finding in Madison. Mark got a book on philosophy and another on science. As someone with lots of books on cooking, gardening and interior design I thought the selections in those categories were excellen; they included titles both familiar and new. Even though the garden and design sections were not large, they should appeal to a varied audience.  

Former Cap Times reporter Joe Schoenmann will be reading from his new book, "Vegas Rag Doll" — a true life account of the spouse of a Vegas hitman — at 7 p.m. this Friday, Oct. 21. Too bad I can't make it as I could trade stories about the wife of a NJ mobster that I once knew.

The store is named for owner James Bohnen’s favorite play, “Arcadia,” by Tom Stoppard, and I noticed a copy prominently on display. Bohnen recently stepped down as founding artistic director of Chicago's Remy Bumppo Theatre Company. This past summer, he directed Shakespeare's "The Tempest" for nearby American Players Theatre. You can find out more about Arcadia Books, including ordering books, at their aptly named web site: read in utopia. 

We ran into a friend on the Art Tour who told us about Convivio, otherwise we might have missed it — even though it is visible from Arcadia Books. While they had some lovely art for the Tour weekend, it was their wonderful array of kitchen and tabletop items that make it worth driving from Madison to visit this shop. Dishes, linens, glassware, baskets, jewelry, wines, and elegant comestibles fill the space. As they note on their web site: "From rowdy conversation with friends to relaxed family interludes, the best times in life happen around your table." You know it's true; that's the allure of this kind of business!

Madison has lost a host of similar stores in the last few years — Fleurishes, Spirals, Gatherings to name a few favorites. Convivio has that same sense of personal style and attitude that characterizes the best shops. I have lots of reasons to return: French and Scandinavian linens, colorful pressed glassware, giftwrap with large scale patterns, stunning woven ribbon by the yard. Add two terrific newer destinations to stalwarts like the Jura Silverman Gallery, Nina's Department and Variety Store, nearby Global View and Taliesin, and it's clear that a quick return to Spring Green is a must! 

Arcadia Books: 102 E. Jefferson St. 608-588-7638

Convivio: 122 N. Lexington St. 608-588-2351

Pumpkin power

Tired of carving the same old pumpkins?

Here's the perfect pumpkin motif

for these times of turmoil:

Pumpkin carving courtesty of

the Milwaukee Ironworkers:

Kicking Ass For The Working Class!

Mini maples

Most gardeners are familiar with dwarf evergreens but may not realize that a number of deciduous trees come in compact versions as well. I've written about my tiny Ginkgos in the past. This time the stars are my mini maples. 

This little beauty directly below is Acer palmatum 'Mikawa Yatsubusa'. I bought three of these in 2006 from Klehm's Song Sparrow Nursery. The catalog call this "one of the rarest and most treasured Japanese maples, forming a magnificent multi-branched small spreading specimen." As you can see, it has tightly packed 5-lobed leaves which almost obscure the structure. They get terrifc fall hues but have not yet started to color up. 

Klehm says it takes full sun to partial shade and will be about 3-4' tall by 4-5' wide (1 x 1.5 meters) in ten years. According to those measurements, the two of my trees that get the most sun are more or less on schedule. The one that gets much more shade is still very small, so I decided to turn into a container plant for the deck. I always cage them so the rabbits and other critters don't munch on them during the winter. It may not be necessary, but with such slow growers I don't want to take a chance on losing even an inch!

I also bought three of these little maples, Acer circinatum 'Little Gem' (center above) from the old Heronswood Nursery in 2004. One died but the other two are doing well. They have more of a typical maple tree form with a rounded crown. Again sun to part shade is recommended but mine are definitely in more shade and don't color up very much in fall. This one is close to mature size of 4' by 4' (1.219 x 1.219  meters), at least in height. It lost a large limb so it's not as wide as it might be. 

Except for the one I mentioned, all of these small maples are in mixed perennial beds. As a result they are most noticeable when flowers aren't blooming — fall and winter seasons. This particular little gem was discovered as a witch's broom in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Foliage Follow-up: 10.16.2011

Not much happening in the flower garden except for the last toad lilies. But the trees and shrubs are starting their fall foliage extravaganza. There are the two tone examples like this weeping Katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum 'pendula'), as well as . . .

Witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana)

the striped bark maple (Acer tegmentosum 'White Tigress')

willow leaf Amsonia (Amsonia ciliata).

Then there are the leaves that are red + another color like this Pagoda Dogwood (Cornus alternifolia)

and this Korean maple (Acer pseudosieboldiana)

Redbud (Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy')

Dwarf Fothergill (Fothergilla gardenii)

Japanese Stewartia (Stewartia pseudocamillia) 

Pagoda Dogwood (Cornus alternifolia)

Doublefile Viburnum (Viburnum plicatum tomentosum 'Mariesi'

and the annual show stopper of the garden, Korean maple (Acer pseudosieboldiana)

To see what kind of foliage is starring in other gardens, visit Pam at Digging who hosts Foliage Follow-Up on the 16th of each month. 

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day: 10.15.2011

The asters and anemones are finished, the sedums have moved into their subdued phase and the stars of my late fall garden — the toad lilies — seem  confused by our bout of warm weather. Of the varitieties that are fall bloomers, only about half of them are actually open and blooming. The rest are still in bud as though they had all the time in the world to flower. Maybe they know something I don't.

You can see what's blooming in gardens around the world by visiting Carol at May Dreams Gardens who hosts Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, this monthly round-up of what's in flower in each of our gardens mid-month.