On rare Tuesday night we went to go see the Staves at Emos. The Staves are a folk rock trio of sisters from England. Jean was in an amateur theater group with two of the sisters in secondary school (high school). It was well worth staying out past my bed time.    

Lots of visible progress on the Community Table today. We installed the first four bents and beams to tie them together. Note: A bent is a section on wall Getting organized for the day. The bents are laid out on saw horses on the right side of the building. The beams are on the left. Raising a bent. The bent vertical so the tenon can drop into the mortise. If it goes in at angle the tenon could snap. Getting a mechanical assist to install a beam Using the commander to hammer a beam into place. So we were told to initial pieces we worked on. Glad this one fit correctly.

Returning from the Community Table, I hopped on my bike and rode down town to join Jean and my Mom at a rally at the Capitol protesting the new presidential administration's initiative to ban refugees from several countries and build/reinforce a border wall with Mexico. There were some thoughtful and pretty civil speeches. I especially like hearing from some refugees who came from countries on the proposed ban list.   

In exploring irrigation options I came across the olla. An olla is a non-glazed clay pot. Traditional ollas have a wide base and a narrow neck. The olla is buried with just the top of neck left above ground. It is then filled with water and the opening covered with a rock or a lid. The water will then slowly wick out into the surrounding soil through capillary action. The dry soil draws out moisture from the olla wall until the soil is evenly saturated. Ollas have several positive points: They minimize water lost to evaporation. They make it impossible to over water a plant because water is only released as the plant uses it. A reasonably sized olla should only have to be refilled every few days. Negative points include: Water spread diameter is not very large. A 6" diameter olla has about a 10" diameter water spread according to this article . You can go with bigger ollas but with the downside of eating up more garden real estate. I can see plants with aggres...

Garden bed preparation continues this week with mulching. A very, very serious mulching. Watching this video  recently about a guy growing a food forest in his suburban lot in Arizona made me realize that perhaps I haven't been taking mulch quite seriously enough. Jake, the guy in the video, has built up close to a foot thick layer of mulch spanning across his front and back yard where he's successfully growing a plethora of plants, shrubs and trees in a climate classified as desert. It made me hopeful considering we get 4-5 times as much rain in central Texas. Distributing hardwood mulch in the garden beds. I spread it out 4" thick. After unloading all the hardwood mulch, we picked up two yards of cedar mulch. The cedar mulch will break down slower than the hardwood mulch. I'll use it mostly for the pathways. I used what cardboard I had before mulching to help with weed suppression. Giving the new mulch a good soaking to help keep it in place.

Spring is coming on fast which means there's no time like the present to get those beds ready for planting. First order of business however is installing some deer protection. On this lovely Sunday afternoon I managed to rope in a few participants for the endeavor. The participants. Some were more willing than others. I'll let you guess who. We used a mason's string and some stakes to create a preliminary design. Then we ran the wheel barrow around the circuit a few times to ensure there were no choke points. The fence post height debate. Dad wanted to use the 10' posts. I thought that would be too prisonesque and opted to use the 5' one. I'm hedging a bet that the enclosure will be too tight for a deer to be comfortable jumping in.  Post driving. Fortunately, it's deep clay in this section of the yard and not limestone. Installing the fence More fence installation and some mugging for the camera Clearing out the beds G...

I haven't been slacking off the past few weeks. It's just I haven't had the most interesting pictures to post. I'm about ready to call the interior plaster finished and start preparations for the floor. After some clean up, the bottle windows in the pony walls are looking pretty good. Cleaning up the bottle window