Garden mirrors from start to finish

Following up on our "start to finish" series that includes stock tank gardens from start to finish, watergarden from start to finish, rainwater harvesting from start to finish, and ollas from start to finish, we now have garden mirrors from start to finish.
Right off the bat, I must warn you: this was a tougher project than the others we tackled.  You've heard the expression "go big or go home"?  Well, I wanted to go big, and what I didn't count on at the outset was the amount of work it would take.

(1) BACKGROUND.

Let me first explain what garden mirrors even are and why they are used.  Garden mirrors have not yet gotten very popular in America for a couple of reasons:

• Most "new world" folks already have what outdoor mirrors are intended to provide an illusion of:  SPACE.  Mirrors tend to be more popular in Europe where, even if folks are wealthy, they often do not have much land around their homesteads.  Therefore, the clever use of mirrors can add extra dimensions to small backyards (which they tend to call "gardens").
• It takes a relatively large mirror to do justice to even a small backyard space, and large mirrors are both expensive and difficult to install.  

Where people do incorporate mirrors into their landscaping however, the effect can range from pleasing to breathtaking:

While these definitely add to the landscape, I find them a little underwhelming because of their relatively small size.
From MoZone The Blog.
http://www.moplants.com/blog/?p=1047



Now I'm beginning to get enchanted.
From http://momspirational.blogspot.com/2011/05/garden-mirrors.html, although that source may have obtained the photo elsewhere (they posted what appears to be one of MoZone's without attribution).



Even more enchanting. 
From
http://www.sunset.com/garden/landscaping-design/mirror-magic-00400000016634/

 (2) SOURCING.

Mirrors.  I would not have attempted this project except for one stroke of good fortune: I found a used pair of enormous sheet mirrors at a church yard sale and bought them both for $40.00. If the same pair of mirrors had been purchased new at retail prices, they would have cost around $600.00, which would have made this project out of the question by virtue of unreasonable expense.   If you are considering a similar project for yourself, keep this in mind: wall-sized sheet mirrors are becoming less popular as designer trends dictate fancier framed mirrors in residential bathrooms.  For this reason, many suburbanites are de-installing their large builder-grade sheet mirrors when they remodel. If you can locate one or more of those secondhand, you might get them at giveaway prices.

Framing materials.  All of the framing materials came from a big box hardware store and are pretty simple (general inventory for two separate mirrors):

• 4x4 inch pressure-treated posts (four 10-footers and four 6-footers)
• three-quarter inch pressure-treated plywood (two 4 x 8 sheets)
• exterior oil based paint (1 gallon)
• common hardware (bolts)
• aluminum mirror mounting track (4 pieces)
• ready mix concrete for mounting the finished framed mirrors in the ground (about five 50-pound bags).

Tools. 

• A circular saw with a good sharp blade suitable for cutting plywood and pressure-treated lumber.  (If you have more sophisticated equipment such as a table saw, your life would likely be easier with this project, but all we had on hand was a circular saw). 
• Measuring tape.
• Something to use to support lumber and the project as it is being constructed (we used about a half dozen cinderblocks)
• A wood rasp or file
• Post hole digger
• Bottle jack
• A great deal of construction-related brain power

Labor.  At least two large strong people would be needed to accomplish anything remotely resembling this project.  While the two of us were sufficient to actually build the mirrors, it was not sufficient to have just myself (130-pound unusually strong female) and my husband when it came time to set the framed mirrors in the ground; we needed a second muscular male to assist with that.

(3) CONSTRUCTION.

Now, this is the section where, if this were any other "start to finish" blog post from us, I would go through the construction in painstaking step-by-step detail.  In this case, however, I'm going to summarize general procedures, ideas, and limitations for you to keep in mind if you do your own project.  There are many different ways to put mirrors into a landscape, every landscape is different, and this is only one approach represented below.

Mirror frame must be both flat and rigid. This was by far the biggest challenge we faced in designing this project.  I managed to drag two enormous but cheap mirrors home from a yard sale, but at that point, we almost became stymied by the obvious technical challenge: how the heck were we going to mount these things in an outdoor environment in a way that both supported their considerable weight, would stand up to the wind (in our area, sometimes hurricane-force), AND would keep them from flexing, which would have led to breakage?!  And how were we going to keep that frame from deteriorating when exposed to considerable fluctuations in temperature and humidity?  And accomplish all of these goals at reasonable cost?  Yikes!!!

After great debate,we settled upon pressure-treated plywood as the backing.

A minivan is a wonderful thing.  It can swallow 4 x 8 sheets of plywood without even belching. I have an entire series of photographs depicting all of the remarkable things that my van has hauled over the years.

 The only trouble with this plywood was that it was very green and it had a very high moisture content. In order to get it as flat as possible and as stable as possible, I had to lay it out to dry on the garage floor in a process that took approximately three weeks!!!!!

Every time one side would begin to get a little bit dry, it would warp. I would then flip it over to re-flatten it, and let the other side dry. As I was doing this, I weighed down the curling edges using cinderblocks and my husband's set of free weights. This whole process was a pain in the lower anatomy, to be sure.

Once the plywood was as dry as I figured it was ever going to get, we cut each piece down to size, making them about 6 inches larger than each mirror. 

These cut-down pieces then received multiple coats of the outdoor oil-based paint.

Then it was time to construct the frames to hold the backing.  This is where my husband's engineering skills came in handy.  Basically we had to cut the frame posts so that they could notch into one another in the same plane...

.. but we also had to cut a groove around the entire frame perimeter into which the plywood could then be inserted so that it would not warp in the future (and crack the mirrors in the process). We considered stabilizing the plywood using other rigid means such as galvanized metal brackets, but that seemed too complicated.  The channel-inset solution was my ever-brilliant husband's idea. 

This pic shows The Engineer working on the top piece of the frame.  The plywood has alread been fitted into the inset channel in the frame piece to photo right.  The come-along straps were used to ensure that the plywood was all the way into the channels, and also to hold the frame tight while it was being bolted together.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, this was not an easy task, and it wasn't the safest project we ever did either.  If you do anything like this, proceed carefully after giving each stage in your process some good contemplation. 

This is not a fast project, either.  We worked on it on and off for a couple of weeks (for two mirrors). 

Once we got the frame bolted together and lowered into the holes we dug, we had to somehow hold it in place while the concrete was poured into the holes around the legs and allowed to harden. We used a floor jack and some cinderblocks to accomplish that. We also framed up the concrete "feet" using loose bricks, which we later came to regret because it was difficult to remove the bricks from the hardened concrete. On our second garden mirror, we used thin plastic forms instead of bricks because they were easier to remove afterward. 

Now for a bit of close-up finish detail:

Here's a close-up of the joinery in the lower right-hand corner of the mirror. It takes considerable construction skill to get these joints to match up perfectly.

We used aluminum mirror mounting track to hold the mirror sheet onto the plywood backing on both its top and its bottom. We sealed the top with clear silicone.  You have to remember that this kind of sheet mirror is not designed to frequently get wet. Most of the Internet resources I found (what few there were) recommended sealing glass mirrors to some kind of a waterproof backing if they are going to be placed outdoors. Otherwise, the mirroring might delaminate (peel off). 

We also silicone'd down each side...

...but we left the bottom without silicone. We figured there was no way to get a perfect seal all the way around the mirror - it was bound to leak a bit somewhere. Therefore, we left the bottom open so that if any water did get between the mirror and its plywood backing, it would have a place to drain out. Time will tell whether this approach is sufficient to prevent significant deterioration of the mirror. 

And now for the semi-finished product, and I do mean "semi" because as I write this, it's the month of January, which means we are in dormancy as far as most plants are concerned:

View of the larger of the two mirrors shortly after installation. Ultimately, I want to run vines up the fence and across the mirror frame so that it gets partially covered and therefore looks a little less stark. In this rather barren configuration, the combination of mirror plus stock tank is faintly reminiscent of a commode (it actually looks LESS like a commode when viewed in 3-D because, between the mirror and the tank, there's a gap large enough to walk through). 

Since the initial installation was completed, we've seen some softening with additional vegetation growing, and I have also discovered an unexpected bonus: 

Tank as of today.  That's broccoli in the rear, and onions in the front. The mirror actually reflects additional sunlight to the plants in the tank, resulting in more robust growth than I usually see.

Smaller mirror with smaller stock tank (this one contains mostly herbs plus one orphaned broccoli at the moment).  Again, in order to complete the picture, additional softening from vegetation is needed. In this case, it will be a southern wax myrtle that sort of cascades over the top of the mirror to soften the edges.  That is partially visible to photo left, but still has some growing to do.

I realize that, stylistically these things would not be to everyone's taste. Aside from wanting garden mirrors, the unusual design we chose reflected a bit of nostalgia on my part: the frames remind me of the Parks Canada signs which have been a part of fond memories throughout my entire life:

Cayley and her grandfather in Nova Scotia,
summer 2011.

So there you have it, and I will post additional pictures as these installations begin to approach their full aesthetic potential.

Snow day

No snow arrived, but 44 roads are iced-over. We have no response equipment for snow or ice, so we just sit and wait until the stuff melts, which ought to be in another five hours or so. 

Well, MOST of us sit and wait.  Some people have tried to go out; there was one ten-car pileup on a freeway north of here around dawn, and plenty of other incidents:

Houston Transtar live road report from 0734 hours this morning.  Everywhere you see a red diamond is an accident.  Buncha people didn't get the memo, apparently.

Aaaaaand two and a half hours later,
no improvement.  One hundred wrecks in four hours, says the media.

It is AMAZINGLY quiet out there, because airports also suspended operations yesterday around mid-afternoon, and I don't know if they've resumed.  All schools are out, so even if someone wants to go to work, the kids are all stuck at home. 

Kind of an underwhelming snow day, but I think I'll go for a walk and enjoy the sound of silence.  And the sights of destruction.

Suckville as far as some of my landscaping is concerned.
There's only so much a person can cover up.

The raised gardens are all covered with 100 watt light bulbs run underneath but, after four days below freezing, I don't know if that's going to be enough to save anything.

Ten-mile transition

A reader identified that mysterious (to me) tree in my last post as being a Betula nigra, more commonly known as river birch. 

Following this bit of edification, I was still perplexed, because I just don't remember ever seeing them around here before.   And I would have noticed: I really miss seeing birch trees of any species - birch are ubiquitous in Canada. 

So I looked 'em up, and what I found is that Montgomery County pretty much represents the absolute southern extent of their natural range. 

Excerpted from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Betula_nigra_map.png

So I'm not necessarily brain-dead on this one: yes, it IS possible that I have spent WEEKS in Lake Houston Wilderness Park never noticing a single one of these, and yet I drive just ten miles further north to a spot along the SAME CREEK, and the land is fulla them.

One wonders what controls this: what makes the tree grow on THIS spot along Peach Creek but not THAT one nearby?  I am used to seeing microclimatic variations here near the coast, but there are no perceptible differences to me in this particular case.  Is it one degree cooler on average ten miles further north?  One inch less annual rainfall?  The trees may be the only living things that can parse the answer to why they grow where they do, and they ain't talkin'.
:-)

The latest gizmo

It originated as a classic example of gender differences:  what the female sees as nothing more than an interesting conversational tidbit is interpreted by the male as an urgently-actionable issue. 

In this case, the informational tidbit was my observation that our current electricity usage seems perplexingly high.  Our new house is Energy Star rated and our SUMMER e-bills are quite low relative to those of the general population.  The trouble is, those bills didn't drop as much as I expected once the WINTER came and the air conditioning system stopped running. 

In my old house, summer bill = 3x winter bill.  Here, summer bill = 1.5x winter bill.  Anyone who lives in the south knows that makes no intuitive sense: air conditioners are supreme energy pigs, consuming way, WAY more than all other consumer devices.  We should not be having only a third of our total bill devoted to the a/c, so I don't know if this apparently-high baseline usage is simply due to the chronic load we put on our system (remember, I run my entire office out of the house), or whether there are serious bleeds and inefficiencies. 

Enter The Engineer and his credit card for the prompt purchase of a TED monitoring system:

One could question the wisdom of spending two hundred bucks on an energy monitor, but the thing might end up paying for itself.
http://www.theenergydetective.com/store/ted-5000

So now there's now a gizmo attached to our exterior electrical panel and another gizmo plugged into an interior wall socket.  And a dizzying array of statistical bullshit emerges from the use of these two pieces of hardware:

This is a small part of what comes across the internet interface.  The other two members of the family are still asleep as I write this, so this basically represents my three oversized monitors coupled to the computer upon which I type, one five-CF-bulb chandelier suspended over my conference table, our huge freezer, and whatever other lights and devices have been left on or are idling or participating in the slow bleed that originates with otherwise-inactive devices siphoning power.

TED has only been running for a couple of days now, but this looks suspiciously like the part that is apparently leading to those perplexingly-high e-bills.  We are running the house in our normal fashion for the next few weeks just so we can get a complete "before" picture prior to instituting behavioral and device changes.

Anyway, this is yet another fascinating foray into the kind of life workings to which one usually doesn't devote much conscious attention.  We can certainly afford our e-bills, but that's not the point.  In general I don't like waste - I think it's unconscionable.  If this can answer for us the question as to whether or not there are ways to trim our usage while not impairing functionality, then it's a worthwhile exercise both financially and mentally. 

There's no need to fear...

... Envirodog is here!
:-)

She doesn't look like a very brave anthropomorphic animal superhero, though, as she pauses beside a pile of illegal dumping.

Underdog was my absolute favorite cartoon when I was a kid.  It must have been my destiny, because - I kid you not - Underdog and I were born at the same time:  the show debuted on the TV airwaves while my mother was in labor delivering me!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Underdog.jpg 

I had always intended to train Nyx to accompany me on site inspections.  She's at the point right now where she will obey well enough to do it, but the entire unprecedented industrial world scandalizes her, so she's not yet relaxed.

A deafening freight train barrels down the road as
the pinned-back ears and sullen expression say,
"I trust you and I'll sit quietly if you want,
but I'm NOT liking this..."

If I did this type of work on a near-daily basis, I would train her to sniff out contamination.  As it is, I'll be happy if she can learn her limits as an orderly sidekick, and have a little fun while she's at it.  It'll come in time.

Reduce, reuse, re-psych-le

I got really spoiled in one conservation-minded respect during the seven years we lived in Pineloch: we were part of the City of Houston's recycling pilot program.

From http://www.houstontx.gov/solidwaste/automatedrecycling.html

Pineloch became the third-best neighborhood in th'big bad city for participation.

We got a 70% participation rate EFFORTLESSLY, for one simple reason: they supplied us with functional receptacles.

Here you see former Mayor Bill White, who by rights SHOULD have won the Texas Governorship a few days ago, pitching the program beside one of the City's signature green roller-carts.

In sharp contrast, THIS is the piece of crap that I now have to deal with in League City:

We can never use these when it rains.

We can never use them when it's windy.

They don't hold very much.

They don't hold larger objects at all.

They can't be stored outdoors.

They are difficult to carry when they get heavy.  The elderly, children and the disabled can't really move them around at all.

Furthermore, the, um, contract personnel who operate League City's trash collection service have not accepted other forms of presentation.  You apparently can't place your recyclables in clearly-marked bags (the plastic bags themselves are recyclable) because they won't pick them up.  And they won't pick it up from cardboard boxes, despite the fact that the boxes themselves are recyclable.  They will only collect the small amount that people manage to cram into these sucky red plastic containers.

I'm tired of seeing poorly-managed recycling shit strewn all over this neighborhood and the last one (Lawrence's, before we moved here - it was also in League City). 

I'm also tired of seeing it spilling out all over the inside of my house every time it rains and I can't put it out (like this week - we had between six and eight inches of rain mid-week).

For these reasons, I decided to try an experiment in containerization.  It's actually not possible to PURCHASE a proper recycling roller-cart unless you spend well over a hundred dollars because they are distributed almost exclusively via municipal contract, and not sold individually.  Therefore, I had to MAKE one:

So, OK, my six bucks worth of spray paint smeared and oversprayed a bit and I need to touch it up so that this, formerly our spare trash cart, now looks official-recycling-cart red rather than Alison-is-trying to-skull-f*ck-the-trash-men red. 

But the point is, it's RED, which is the official color of recycling in this city.  They SHOULD pick up our recyclables from this, should they not?  Right??  Should this not be sufficient to psych them into it??

And by the way, it's not that I have too much time on my hands, because I seriously don't.  But I've always had far too much energy, especially for the doing of goofy stuff.
;-)

Lake Jackson Wilderness Park

I had passed by it many times before, never knowing it was there, but this book brought it to my attention and I seized 57 post-work minutes yesterday to explore part of it.

This is the type of density I like to see in hiking trail parking lots:

A little Texas history thrown into the mix doesn't hurt either:

A typical upper Texas coast bottomland, the trees were a cathedral of Spanish moss:

I had slow-going, however, because of my visceral dislike of these things, which web across trails and about which I've written before:

Buffalo Camp Bayou above the spillover associated with the regional surge-control levee:

Unfortunately the bayou is choked by this plant which appears beautiful individually but which is highly invasive and devastating to area waterways:

I was struck by the diversity of plants on this trail, some familiar such as the ubiquitous native yaupon holly, which is one of my favorites:

And palmetto, although this is the first one I've ever seen actually fruiting:

But there were trees there that are not as commonly seen:

One of which produces this brain-ball type of seed thing:

I found these remains near the parking lot and couldn't decide whether it was animal or human that had rendered them.  I'm thinking perhaps feral hog due to the stoutness of the bones, but I don't know much about mammalian biology:

Because I had limited time and because it's banana-spider season, I only got about a half mile down the trail, but I intend to revisit this spot in the future.

Full frontal!!!

It's coming!!  It's coming!!

These were the breathless thoughts of anticipation surrounding today's big event, which is depicted here in this spherical projection due north from our work-in-progress back yard:

Do you see that eerie white arc across the sky?  No, that is not a blast wave, and downtown Houston did not, in fact, implode - that's our first cold front of the season!!!

You northern folk probably don't appreciate the significance of this, but each year, we patiently wait about five terribly long months for this milestone.  Do you see how the normally-stalwart federal government actually drew the anticipated position of the front in two successive temporal positions on that map above??  Even THEY were excited about it!!  (Or maybe they just wanted people to stop calling them and asking, "Is the front here yet?!?!?")

Especially this year, with landscaping in progress, I was literally counting the hours.  I have sweated my guts out over the past couple of weeks (statistically we should have cooled down before now, so Mother Nature's timing was off, not mine).  I was more excited about the arrival of this cold front than I was about the births of the last half-dozen of my friends' babies.

:-)

(Well, not really, but you get the picture). 

I'm looking forward to tomorrow morning when I will begin ripping sod for the main planter bed for a few hours before I start work of the consulting kind.  We've planted six Italian cypress thus far, but we saved the real heavy lifting (literally) for the cooler weather which is now thankfully upon us.

The southern hinges

There's much ado in Houston's blogosphere about the record high temperatures we've been having, both from the climate side and from the general science side. 

Grab from www.chron.com

I complained twice that none of the stated data and perspectives appear to be taking the urban heat island effect into consideration.  Newsflash for the nerdy dudes - greater Houston is currently adding about one million new people every ten years.  Dontcha think that's gonna have an effect on our regional thermal output??!  Maybe?!?!

http://www.wikipedia.org/

As for me, I was delighted to find that our electric bill for the 30 days ending August 20 was $157.82. Granted, we were on vacation for some of that period, but I still kept the air conditioner running at a low level to combat humidity, and that bill has been consistent with other recent numbers we have seen.  Thus far, we have been pleased with Meritage's Energy Star performance. This article alleges that they were the first major builder in the country to build Energy Star homes exclusively.

For-puke-me-nots

'Tis the season to get nursery plants on sale, especially when one has a newly-sodded yard completely devoid of landscaping.  I waited two months for a certain trio of six-foot Pride of Houston yaupon hollies to come on sale, and - yay - got them today for 75% off original price.  This is a cultivar of an indestructible native species that appeals to my desire for things Houston and sustainable.

www.wikipedia.org / US Fish & Wildlife Service

The latin name for this species is Ilex vomitoria, so named because a Native American ceremonial tea made from their leaves was erroneously believed by early European settlers to cause vomiting.  There's a clever joke in here somewhere, but I'm so exhausted from struggling to pack all three of the massive things into the minivan in a 102-degree heat index that I can't think of it.