Whacked the President with a Single Stick

...e ex-Colonel nor the ex-Lieutenant Colonel of the Rough Riders has aimed a making this point, but both havve confined themselves to developing their skill with the weapon and getting as much exercise and fun out of the game as possible. Notwithstanding this, it is impossible to play with single-sticks without occasionally getting hurt, and both the President and his ex-superior officer have daily given and received some pretty severe raps. Lumps h...

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Our new front yard, part 3: design

...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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Our new front yard, part 2: theory

...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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Fun With Mortises and Tenons

...els of craftsmanship, I haphazardly fixed the table with screws and nails. Making the mortises and tenons took forever even though I was working with power tools–a plunge router to make the mortises and a table saw to cut the tenons. Of course, a great deal of the time in the workshop was spent in idle chatter. My workshop is right on the public sidewalk and serves as a kind of conversational trap for every passing neighbor and dog walker. Kelly s...

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A Better Garage Organizational System

...anges to the workshop I made in order to make it more useful for furniture making such as being sure that I could access my workbench from all sides, as well as improvements to the dust collection system. I can detail these changes in a future post but I’m more interested in showing that a well organized workshop can benefit any activity from sewing to gardening. Taking the time to plan a workspace makes work go much easier. Aesthetics are importa...

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