Making New Drawers . . . Plus Rants . . . Plus Roland Barthes

...Once I got home from the lumberyard I set about installing the slides and making story sticks, which are pieces of scrap wood cut to the precise size of the final drawer and used as a guide for milling and sizing the final dimensions of the maple I had bought. In making drawers there’s a very, very small margin of error in terms of sizing. You have to be precise. https://youtu.be/jyMwR3jjtGg The next step was to cut the dovetails. I took a class...

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What are trees worth?

...ing a pump and well which you don’t have to maintain. Trees make for clean water. By absorbing all that storm water, they pull the filth from our streets into the soil, and the soil cleans it, pro bono. (This is one of the many benefits of healthy soil, another important player in environmental health.) If that storm water runs unchecked, it just dumps all of the oil and fertilizer and insecticides and poo straight into the nearest waterway. Trees...

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It Quacks Like a Duck

...of the line was an old comrade of ours, one of the proprietors of Petaluma Urban Homestead, who we know from Mr. Homegrown Revolution’s post grad school sojourn in the dull city of San Diego. In the ten years since we lost contact it turns out that our lives have taken similar paths, including the appreciation of Xtracycles and poultry. Except that the folks at Petaluma Urban Homestead have had the brilliance of exploring the world of ducks in add...

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Make a Sourdough Starter

...feel guilty about pouring off that cup of flour every day, and you aren’t making a loaf of bread, try making some sourdough pancakes. 7. If you aren’t going to bake for a few days put the starter in the fridge. Feed it once a week. To revive it, take it out of the fridge and give it a day or two of feedings before you use it. So how does this work? What you have done is create a hospitable environment for a pair of organisms (wild yeasts and lact...

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Saturday Linkages: Water Shaming, Scotts and Robot Houses

Smarter urban water: how Denver turned to ridiculing waste http://gu.com/p/4va3t/tw Grid-It: Knoll your everyday carry http://boingboing.net/2014/08/20/grid-it-knoll-your-edc.html … In Our Garden: Four Surprising Fruits http://thehorticult.com/in-our-garden-four-surprising-fruits-that-are-now-in-full-swing/ … Sneak peak of a LIGHT-UP ROBOT-FACE Tree House http://relaxshacks.blogspot.com/2014/08/sneak-peak-of-light-up-robot-face-tree.html?spref=tw...

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