Author: Dale

The GLRP, 10/26/16

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Step 4: Improve the walkway

Years and years and years ago, before there was a labyrinth, before there was anything in the back yard but weeds, I created a walkway.  It has remained a constant no matter what else has happened in the area.

After we put in the patio two years ago, I re-landscaped it with mulch and all that jazz, but that has never been quite satisfactory.  The mulch drifts, and it looks messy.  So now I’m taking steps to contain the mulch:

The majority of the work was creating a trench for the dwarf mondo grass.  The ground is so dry and hard that I used a trencher to cut through the soil, then again to create a parallel cut.  I watered it to soften it, waited, then went back over it with two different shovels, watering and scraping the whole time.  It was tedious.

I also wondered at the ethics of a construction grading firm who—twenty years previously—blithely bulldozed all the construction detritus into what was surely going to be a landscaped back yard.1

I also also wonder at The Home Depot, where I bought out their entire stock of dwarf mondo grass (six flats), and the nice lady watering the plants asked if I would be needing more.  I cheerfully replied, “Maybe, but you certainly will.”

Getting the mondo into the ground was easy: plop the plant into the trench, cover.

“People” will tell you that mondo grass is easy, that you plant some and it will “spread” and “fill in.”  These “people” are lying.  It never does.  There was a small patch near the downspout by the patio for twenty years, and it never grew nor spread.  Never.

So if I want to further fill in the path with mondo, I will have to buy it and plant it.  That should keep me busy until my mid-70s at least.

In other news, you may have seen the video on the FaceTubes about the cool little metal triangle that all manly men should have to cut lumber and/or pipe.  It slices, it dices, it’s better than a Veg-O-Matic.  I bought one last month and yesterday I got to use it for the first time.

One of the great pleasures of being alive is when something like this is everything that is claimed for it.2   Where was this device during all those years of set building at the theatre??

I used it to cut a board to insert into the fence along the patio, because of course the lighting fixture we’ve been holding for a couple of years, waiting on a new fence, is too big to fit between the rails but too small to attach to the rails.

One more thing: a huge task on my GLRP checklist was to dig up the underground speakers and figure out why they had stopped working.  I figured I would at least have to buy new speakers; I hoped I wouldn’t have to dig up the cables as well.

I plugged in my little marine amp (not all-weather, just weather “resistant”) and plugged in the iPad and the speakers, just to be ready to test.  Lo! the far speaker, down where until last week there were ferns (::sigh::) began playing.

Great, I thought, only one speaker to dig up.  I began to pull up the bricks that I had laid around the speaker to slow down the ivy.  As soon as I touched the second brick—THE SECOND BRICK, KENNETH—the speaker came on.  This is after months of not producing sound of any kind.

I chalked it up to living a virtuous life and replaced the brick.

…to be continued…

—————

1 I don’t have to wonder at all.  I remember the day: I had arrived home from school to find the bulldozer guy grading the entire back yard into a slope down to the retaining wall despite the contract to create two levels.  I stopped him, told him he was doing it wrong, he said he knew nothing about it and started back up.  I stopped him again and told him rather acerbically that either he could call his boss and find out the specifics, or he could finish the job and then I would call his boss and he would have to re-do the entire yard.  He rather sensibly chose the former.

2 Another thing that performs equally well is the Sonos sound system.  It’s awesome when you can have every speaker in the house playing a different station and can control all of them from your phone or iPad or computer. But I digress.

The GLRP, 10/25/16

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Step 3: Reclaim the southwest corner

Yesterday I began reconstructing the southwest corner.

The problem is that the new fence was designed to cut straight from one neighbor’s fence on the right to the other neighbor’s shed on the left—and the original chain link fence hugged the retaining wall before jogging over to the shed.  Hence, I lost two–three feet of landscaping, as seen here:

There is actually one of my ferns on the other side of the fence now (which, it just dawned on me, I can go dig up and move…) I’m also missing several cherry laurel saplings which framed the westpoint bowl rather nicely.  Oh well.

The area’s been problematic anyway: the slope of the ground there means that the bricks are always being covered with dirt washing down the hill. It’s impossible to grow grass there, and the battle with the ivy and the thorns is never-ending.  So revamping it is a net plus, actually.

First, take up all the bricks:

Here’s what I’m thinking: define an extension of the mostly level labyrinth area, build a mini-retaining wall, fill in the space with dirt, re-establish the brick edging.

Install some stone steps leading down to that back corner and resurface it with paving stones, perhaps as a little sitting nook?

I’ll let this sit for a couple of days to see how it grows on me.

The Great Labyrinth Reclamation Project

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The Great Labyrinth Reclamation Project [GLRP hereinafter] has begun.

Given that it’s been too hot to do any outdoor maintenance, and given that we’ve had no rain, it should come as no surprise that the labyrinth is a minor disaster: the grass is dead, while the ivy/bamboo/privet/wisteria have run riot.

Normally, that would not entail a lot of worry.  Just get out there and kind of work it out as one moseys through life, ne-ç’est pas?  However, in a moment of weakness earlier this year I agreed to allow the labyrinth to be a part of the Presbyterian Preschool Tour of Homes on December 3.  So now I am under a deadline, which at least will get the job done.

Step 1: Install a new fence.

Here we have a happy labyrinth owner installing a new bamboo fence over the original chain link fence six years ago. This was for privacy, of course, and it was quite lovely, although as you can see it did not completely block anyone from seeing into the yard.  I was not worried, since I knew the ivy would grow up over the bamboo and provide cover.

Which it did, and that worked—until the bamboo began to rot and break down.

Here we see, if through a lovely sprinkler earlier this year, the wild and woolly state of the fence.  (That lush green grass died almost immediately.)  It was really ratty looking, and that included some rats who would trot about on top of the chain link.

And so I’ve been looking for someone to replace the chain link with a real fence.  I tried dealing with a builder recommended by a neighbor, but that person led me on (since April!) and I finally turned to Angie’s List, where I found First Fence of Georgia.  I highly recommend them, although parts of this process may give you pause about hiring them.  Ignore the roadbumps: this is a good company.

I really wanted an 8-foot fence, given the proximity of my neighbors, but city ordinances only allow 6-foot fences.  I could have applied for a variance, but by the time I hired First Fence it was too late.  So I asked First Fence to install a 6-foot fence with 8-foot posts; I could, if I wished, install art stretched between them, art that might even look like curtains.  Or summat.

The crew arrived at 8:00 a.m. and got straight to work.  Every now and then I’d wander out and smile brightly at them.  Chain link—gone.  Ivy—ripped out.  Post holes—dug.  Posts—installed, two feet deep in concrete.  Cross pieces—nailed in.

And so it was that shortly after lunch I went to the back yard to marvel at their progress and found—to my horror—that they had installed 6-foot posts.

I suppose I could have been a raging asshole and demanded that they tear everything down and start over, but a) that’s not who I want to be; and b) the expense, while probably bearable by First Fence, might have fallen on the two young Hispanic men who had made the error.  Let’s face it, unless someone had specifically told them, “Remember this dude wants 8-foot posts, so that’s different than what you do every other day of the year,” it was easy to miss the one reference (in 6-point type) to the posts being 2′ taller than the fence.

On the other hand, I had asked for—and was paying for—8-foot posts.  So I stopped the work and told them about the problem.

The lead worker was calm, but crushed.  He double-checked the blueprint and there it was in plain 6-point sight.  I told him I wasn’t mad, exactly, but I was upset.  I’d call the office to see what they recommended.

By the time I had spoken to the office (and been told the person to whom I needed to talk would have to call me back), the lead worker had a solution: what if we ran 2x4s up either side of the posts?  I liked it, specifying that they use cedar instead of pine just for extra safeguard against warping.  And so we did.

Quite frankly, even though it means that I will have to create the art, i.e., EXTRA WORK, KENNETH, I think it’s actually more attractive.  I think First Fence should offer it as a design, and I think they ought to pay the young man who thought of it royalties.

More to come.  Way more to come.

I did good, cont. again

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…Part Three in a three-part series…

In the normal state of affairs, I would have blogged in great detail about this whole thing, because I’m incredibly wonky about process and I would have loved to share every excruciating detail about How I Did It, but in this case there were hippie-feelings involved.  Just posting the first draft of the graph paper map on the Theme Camp Organizer [TCO] Facebook group (to show them that the process was under way) was enough to set off a frenzy of squinting and worrying about where they were.  I learned to blur the map as I teased them with my progress.

So now you’re just getting the Cliff’s Notes version of How I Did It.  Sorry, future Placement Leads—I’ll try to write it all down elsewhere.  It’ll be under the third rock on the right after you enter the HeadSpace…

Wednesday, early entry day for those camps who need a bit of setting up before the burn starts on Thursday.  Most theme camps are arriving, especially the big ones.

I am given a walkie-talkie and a golf cart.  Do you know how many years I have avoided being given a walkie-talkie and a golf cart (or their equivalents)?  All of them, Katie.  Oy.

But it was a miracle: only a handful of camps had real issues with their spot—and I had predicted which ones might, in my head—and by the time I tootled up on my cart, each had a solution to their problem that was viable and acceptable.  All I had to do was give my imprimatur and hop back on my cart in a cloud of red dust and gratitude.

In short, it worked.

—click to embiggen—

It worked, it worked, it worked!

The photo above is an aerial shot taken Friday afternoon (by Christopher Curzio) when almost all the theme camps (and open camping) were in place.  You can see the boulevards, the art garden circle, the paths—none of which were actually there 48 hours before.

You can also see the 3 Old Men labyrinth in all its splendor.  Doesn’t it look swell from the air?  Most impressive.

When I finally got out of camp on Thursday night, I walked the entire burn, and it was working exactly as I thought it should.  All the hippies were happy,1 and the place was alive and humming as if it had always been there.  It worked.

And 3 Old Men?  Have I mentioned we made an improvement this burn?

—click to embiggen—

IT LIGHTS UP, KENNETH!  More than that, the strands glow and fade and dance in patterns you can control from your phone, because it has its own little mini-wifi point!  It was amazing.  (Kudos to Old Man Scruffy for the design, construction, and programming of the whole project.) As usual, I will not go into details, since what happens at a burn stays at a burn, but there were spirituality and abandon in equal measure, generosity, astounding creativity, good friends, beautiful weather.  What’s not to like?

All in all, a good burn.  I learned a lot about placing all the hippies and of course will do it again, although if we move to a new property again I may have to issue a stern statement of concern.

updated 10/23/16 to add: Holy crap, Bubba, I just realized—I have designed the “largest burn in the U.S.,” other than Burning Man itself.

—————

1 As far as I could tell, obviously.  I’ll do a post-mortem survey of the TCOs next week to find out for sure.  I know there was one camp who was extremely surprised at how small their allotment was, but when I got home and checked, they had requested exactly what they got.  But they were right: it was not enough room.

I did good, cont.

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Part Two in a three-part series

Having organized my thoughts by writing a manifesto on the design of a burn, I began to see how much I could apply to the property.  Since it was less than an hour away, I was able to drive up to the farm repeatedly to walk every inch of it, measuring with my handy-dandy laser rangefinder and making disastrously incomplete notes.  Pro tip: besides a rangefinder, you also need a kick-ass GPS coordinates thingie, one that will give you accurate, precise, and above all repeatable coordinates for any spot you’re standing on.  Unlike your phone, for example.

I started a Google map, and on that I began to lay out the main thoroughfares—the boulevards—for the burn.  Pretty simple, actually: other than the existing road, you just draw lines down the middle of the main masses.  Then it was a matter of figuring out where the infrastructure went: Center Camp, the Effigy/Temple, other burnable art, etc.

Then, using my handy-dandy FileMaker Pro database, I printed out little “chips” for each camp:

Notice how it has almost everything I need to know about that camp: dimensions, area, acreage (Google maps deals in acreage, not sq. ft.), whether it’s outward-facing, inner-, or bedroom (read the manifesto), any village they’re part of, and a color code for kid-friendliness.  (“The Middle Ground” is the neighborhood, which in my case I already knew because I’m the Placement Lead and I already know where my camp is going LOOK ON MY WORKS YE MIGHTY…)

There were 109 of these.  (There were 79 additional chips for art projects, but most of those were contained within their camps.)

beginning of the process

I commandeered the dining room table and drafted a large version of the Google Map on an 18×24 piece of engineering graph paper.1  I then cut out little rectangles for each camp.

Then I placed them.  See?  Piece of cake.

No, it was actually quite difficult.  Sound camps had to be restricted. Not all sound camps could be where they wanted to be. Everyone, literally, wanted “flat, near the trees, on the road, centrally located, away from the sound camps.”  Some had contradictory or illusory requirements (e.g., “near the Effigy and Center Camp,” or my favorite, “out in the field near a power source”).

Corrections (“Did you really mean to request 52,000 sq ft??”), revisions, and unending Successive Approximation, for two weeks.  Done, released into the wild, and done.

Except then it was time to make it real, leading a team of fantastic volunteers through the vision, whacking wooden stakes into dry, brick-hard ground and stringing surveyor’s tape between them, and not panicking when the measurements simply didn’t work.  Whole camps vanished and had to be relocated.  Space opened up where there had been none.  Open camping areas got smaller and smaller as the theme camps had to be shifted around.

Oy.

That was Sunday.  I retreated from build weekend knowing that I had done the thing, but stressed beyond belief as to whether the thing would work.  I packed 3 Old Men on Monday and Tuesday, and on Wednesday went back up for early entry.

…to be continued…

—————

1 As one does.

I did good

Posted on by Dale
photo by Roger Easley

You may have noticed, in my gargantuan list of activities from yesterday, that a great many of them had to do with Alchemy, our fall regional Burning Man-style gathering.  Here’s what happened.

Last spring, we were on new property over in the Great Eastern Wastelands of Georgia and were thinking we had found a new, permanent home.  (We hadn’t.)  It was my second time helping the Placement Team lay out the burn, i.e., measuring out the campsites for the theme camps and marking them with stakes and construction tape, and even as we did it I figured that the layout was going to be problematic: it was little more than two straight streets, one each on two great legs of land in a V shape, with camps to either side.  (It didn’t help that Euphoria, the spring burn, has fewer participants and many camps set up away from the road, leaving huge tracts of land seemingly unoccupied.)

Sure enough, after the burn the complaints were consistent: it didn’t feel like a burn.  The hippies said it wasn’t explorable; it felt as if you were walking down a midway at a carnival.

Not a problem, I thought.  The Placement Lead and I had discussed the planning a couple of times, and he had readily admitted that this burn was an Abortive Attempt—just get it down and see what happens, and then we’ll make changes for the next burn.  Exactly as it should be, I thought.

And so that’s why I volunteered to be Placement Co-Lead.  I wanted to provide some insight on the “urban design” of the burn.  Toss in a few ideas, jigger with the map, and show up build weekend to drive stakes and stretch tape.  What could go wrong?

Here’s how that went wrong.

First, we moved again.  Rather than the Eastern Wasteland property, we were now on completely new territory.  Not a problem.  I mean, it’s just unfamiliar terrain, right?  (Actually, I was pleased.  I had issues with the previous property; I intended my input to ameliorate its deficiencies.)

Second, Real Life™ overtook my new Placement Lead, and so one morning in August I awoke to find an email from our superior assuring her that Dale could step up and handle it.  Oy.  Of course I could handle it, but that’s not the point, hippies.  I have made it a part of my guiding philosophy not to be in charge any more.

My virgin canvas, Little Big Jam in Bowdon, GA

But I did it.  I redesigned and streamlined the registration form.  I whipped up a FileMaker Pro database to suck up all those registrations and slice and dice the info in ways that made sense.  I drove up to the farm about eight times to tromp all over that property, taking measurements and making notes as to which areas were unsuitable for camping.

(I may or may not have also picked an absolutely perfect spot for 3 Old Men, my own theme camp.  Sue me.)

But before all that, I wrote a manifesto.  I pulled A Pattern Language 1 from my shelf, picked the patterns I felt would contribute to the overall well-being of the hippies, and wrote a 14-page treatise entitled Patterns: the language of burn layout & placement.  You should read it.  (The dry response from one of my trusted mentors in the burn community: “This is brilliant.  No one else needs to see this.”)

Thus secured against surprise, I sat down before the fire to take my gruel.  Wait, no, that’s Christmas Carol, a whole ‘nother set of blog posts.

…to be continued…

—————

1 A Pattern Language: book, website, pdf.  This book has been influential in my life in many, many ways.  Highly recommended.

Well, hello there!

Posted on by Dale

Mercy, it’s been a month and a half since I’ve been able to even visit my blog.

You may wonder why, with all the foolishness available from the Presidential campaign, I have not been ranting nonstop during this time.  Two reasons: 1) I realized it would not be a healthy choice; and b) I’ve been busy.  For real busy.

Since I last spoke up here, I have:

  • helped clean out and shut down my in-laws’ house in Virginia, including a massive tag sale and dragging what wasn’t sold back here
    • local tag sale still to come
  • guided theme camps for Alchemy through the registration process for placement
  • designed the layout for the burn (on new property and thus tabula rasa)
  • driven up to the property five or six times to double-check my measurements and campability of the terrain
  • placed all those theme camps as close as I could to their requirements (all of which were “flat, by the road, near the treeline, centrally located, but away from the sound camps”)
    • this included 109 pieces of graph paper moving around for two weeks on an enlarged-by-hand map
  • created the Google map of the theme camps, art installations, roads/paths, stages, neighborhoods, villages, and infrastructure
  • generated the files for theme camp signs
  • led the Placement Team on build weekend, mapping out the theme camps and roads with stakes and tape
    • many changes in the map as we discovered space/time warpage on the property
  • coordinated my own theme camp, 3 Old Men, which had grown from about six campers to sixteen
  • packed and loaded an 8×10 trailer full of tubs, tents, tables, and general stuff for 3 Old Men
  • played Placement Overlord as the theme camps began arriving, making adjustments/giving permissions on the fly
  • enjoyed the burn
  • brought it all home, unpacked it, cleaned it (red dust everywhere), repacked it, stowed it
  • during all of this, auditioned A Christmas Carol and began rehearsing it
    • including creating/writing a frame story for the show to accommodate all the little girls (and scarcely any adults) who auditioned
  • coached my Boys & Girls Club Youth of the Year nominee in essay writing, speech giving, and interview skills
  • contracted for two huge oak trees to be taken down
    • which King Tree Service did in spectacular fashion, with a 30-ton crane reaching over the house to do so
  • contracted for a new fence for the back yard (First Fence of Georgia—they just started this morning, and so far I have nothing but praise for the entire company)
  • closed out my late mother’s estate

So yeah, I’ve been busy, too busy to write on this blog WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE WANT FROM ME??

We now return you to your regularly scheduled service.

There’s more

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