Cat Scratch Fever: How to Make Your Own Cat Scratching Posts

January 28, 2016

...make nice things scratch-able? With these two notions in mind I set about making a scratching post that I could attach to the side of our Ikea couch. Here’s what you’ll need: 3/8 inch sisal rope scrap wood (I used a 4×4) [I have revised this post: nails work better than staples!] #17 x 1 inch wire nails hot glue (optional, but a few dabs will keep the sisal on the post longer) Wrapping the wood is straightforwards, if tedious. I used some clamps...

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How to Design and Fabricate Homestead Projects

Mr. Homegrown

January 14, 2016

Design

6 Comments

...Brain. Once you go through that you’re ready for a fun book I’m currently making my way through called Sketching for Architecture + Interior Design. Modeling Lastly it’s time to get those ideas in the free version of the 3d program Sketchup. You can learn Sketchup in an evening or two and it has really helped separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to my many bad ideas. With Sketchup you can rotate the object and really see if it works ae...

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Our new front yard, part 3: design

Mrs. Homegrown

November 17, 2015

Back to the Garden, front yard series, Garden Design, Gardening

3 Comments

...showiest plants, and also the ones that persist no matter what the season, making them the bones of the garden. This includes trees and bushes, as well as large perennials. In a grassland landscape where there are no trees or bushes, this category would include tall grasses as well as plants with dramatic seed heads which persist long after the bloom. Filler plants: These are the transitory, often self-seeding plants which pop up opportunistically...

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Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Gardening Wisdom

Mr. Homegrown

August 18, 2015

Garden Design, Gardening

2 Comments

...waters are continually flowing in.” Installing is the hard toil of garden making, placing is its pleasure. I think I’ve spent too much time in the installing and not enough time contemplating the placing. In so doing gardening has become more of a chore than a pleasure. Superior gardens are composed of Glooms and Solitudes and not of plants and trees. I take this to mean that a garden should express moods and ideas and not be just a collection of...

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Our new front yard, part 2: theory

Mrs. Homegrown

November 13, 2015

Back to the Garden, front yard series, Garden Design, Gardening

12 Comments

...ch makes working on it real fun.) That might be one reason why the idea of making it into an orchard had so much appeal. When garden design books bother to address hillside gardens, they always feature much bigger hills than ours, and these hills feature expensive hardscaping, like artfully arranged imported boulders, fancy staircases which sweep along the contour of the hill, or dazzling water features. Nobody designs in 15 foot wide spaces stuff...

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