Botanical Plaques, Mark 2 & 3

In my last post, I talked about designing a botanical plaque to label trees in the yard. The design had some flaws. It was two pieces epoxied together and most of them broke apart after 6–12 months. I suspect water got in the gap, froze, and helped separate the pieces from the dried epoxy. This … Continue reading Botanical Plaques, Mark 2 & 3

Botanical Plaques, Mark 1

I have a bunch of cool-looking and weird trees at the house. In a notebook somewhere, and elsewhere in a text file, I have a list of their names. And if I’m honest, that’s fine for the one time every couple of years where I want to look up what’s what. If you’ve been to … Continue reading Botanical Plaques, Mark 1

Complicating Simple Projects With Lasers

One big thing that happened in my Maker life, back in November, was that I became the proud new owner of a Glowforge laser cutter. I’ve been so engrossed in little projects for it, that I completely neglected to write anything about any of them. A few weeks ago, I was preparing to move some … Continue reading Complicating Simple Projects With Lasers

Cat food cans to garden tags

[Blog note: I have a more recent post about making garden tags with a laser cutter.] I have written several recent posts about creating things FOR cats (see also: cat scratcher, printed toy ball, cut toy ball, etc.), but this is a short post based on creating something FROM the byproduct of cat ownership. I … Continue reading Cat food cans to garden tags

My mysterious house

My house was built in, depending on whom you ask, 1908 (Portland Maps) or 1924 (my insurance company). Like many old houses, it has its own quirks, oddities, and secrets. It has organically grown over the years. I believe it has just about doubled in size since it was first built.  We have been here for … Continue reading My mysterious house

A conversation over weed pulling

Today I got to continue a 4th of July tradition: pulling up the past 6 months of neglected weeds from the back yard.  This year, though, it was a little different.  Sure, there were still plenty of weeds, but more interestingly, there were worms — lots of them.  In previous years, the lawn itself has … Continue reading A conversation over weed pulling

I haz a corm!

The squirrels and I, we have a love/hate relationship. In general, I like them, and I like having them around, but I really dislike it when they steal from the bird feeder. As such, I do a few things to protect the feeder, which sometimes escalates to shooting the squirrels with a squirt gun. The … Continue reading I haz a corm!

Compostification

Almost exactly a year ago, I built a compost bin out of spare palettes I scrounged up in the inner-SE industrial area. For various reasons, we never quite got around to using it. Part of it was knowledge and experience. Part of it was laziness. Part of it was being a little unsure of the … Continue reading Compostification

Tomatoes

Things I love about this time of year: * Every few days having a new tupperware tub of cherry tomatoes * Eating many of the tomatoes before they even reach the house * Kim’s home-made pasta sauce (even if it was made from beefsteak tomatoes and not sauce tomatoes) * Horseradish that magically grows without … Continue reading Tomatoes

Not sure if I think this is cool because it's cool or if I'm not yet awake enough

Please note that all blog posts before 8 April 2007 were automatically imported from LiveJournal.  To see the comments and any LiveJournal-specific extras such as polls and user icons, please find the source posting at http://brianenigma.livejournal.com/2006/01/Note to self (because del.icio.us is, once again, teh brok3n): interesting way to grow tomatoes indoors during the winter months