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Night time temperatures are dipping again this week, but Jerry the Rhodesian Fridgesnack has great pyjamas…

Red Cross in Haiti (2008)

Want to help the victims of the earthquake in Haiti?  Relief organizations need your help, but want donors to know that some kinds of help are definitely better than others.

InterAction, a coalition of U.S.-based international non-governmental organizations (including the Center for International Disaster Information)gives these tips:

• Cash donations are widely recognized as the most efficient and effective means of relief in the established international disaster response community.

• While they may be well-intentioned, clothing, canned goods, and other in-kind donations are *not* the  preferred choice for humanitarian contributions to Haiti.  Consider reserving these kinds of donations for needs in your local community.

• Donate wisely!  Make sure your money goes to a credible responding agency for international emergencies.  InterAction is regularly updating this list of  member agencies who are responding to the earthquake.  For more information about how to choose a legitimate charity, visit www.give.org.

Non-starters in this week’s news:

• Why was it wrong for Harry Reid to say that Obama’s light skin and standard American dialect helped him win the presidency? The fact is, our country wouldn’t have elected a man who looked or sounded too black because our country never elects presidents who look or sound too anything, much less anything that is also TOO NEW.  (For the record: I voted for Obama.)

• Nor do I understand what’s so shocking about Sarah Palin’s saying she believed that running for vice president had been God’s will. Is there anyone alive who has not yet heard that Sarah Palin believes in God?  So wouldn’t it be more interesting to find out that she’d accepted a nomination she believed was AGAINST God’s will? (For the record: I did *not* vote for Sarah Palin.)

• And now, Avatar the movie, one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen recently, is coming under fire, and from weirdly opposite directions. However, anything so wildly popular is going to be criticized, if only to help journalists pay the rent. (For the record: no one is paying me a cent.)

First criticism: Avatar as anti-military.  The narrator TELLS us at the beginning that “this was not the military: these were hired guns.”  It’s IN THE SCRIPT, people: this is not an anti-military movie, it’s an anti-corrupt-mercenary movie.

And let’s not forget that the Na’vi natives are just as vicious with their knives, arrows and Large Strong Animals as the humans are with their machinery… vicious enough that the Pandorans actually BEAT the humans, after all. And did any of us hate those battle scenes? I rest my case.

Then there’s the “Avatar as anti-American”  critique. What interests me most about that one is the way these critics would have us all define “American.”

If “American” equals “Unrelentingly murderous, sadistic capitalists,” then I’ve understood these critics correctly, but few will  agree with them.   The rogue Jake Sully is the American hero we identify with, not his employers. I would venture to say that most Americans, conservatives especially, believe that America is the land of the free.  We LOVE that about ourselves, and when we go to war, the reason most conservative Americans will give – and the principal that most Americans in general are particularly passionate about– is the preservation of freedom and democracy. 

Not that Americans are always very good at preserving freedom and democracy when they go to war, but it would be wrong to conclude therefore that the entire country is sadistic enough to make the destruction of freedom and democracy its central purpose. 

So if the conservative critics are wrong, how about the liberal critics?  Is this movie racist?   True: the hero is white, and most of the Na’vi are played by (and resemble) people of color. However, I can’t remember if the other humans in the movie were predominantly white or not, though the American military (my strongest model, as I too am American ) is extremely diverse — in fact, it is one of the most racially diverse populations in the world. Therefore, I don’t remember the human invaders in Avatar as “white” but  as “human.” But is even a human vs. Na’vi contest race-neutral enough, given that it took a member of the advanced, imperialist human race to save the naive, native Pandoran one?   But were the Pandorans really so naive,  were the humans really so advanced, and did Jake Sully really represent “A White Messiah?” 

Perhaps it would have been more graceful if Jake Sully had been played by a black actor. I am willing to concede that point: I didn’t pay much attention to Jake Sully’s race, but that alone may be telling. Perhaps we all could use some fresher imagery.

What I did notice was that a 6 foot tall familiarly-colored person fell in love with a 10 foot tall bright blue person, and that seemed pretty multi-cultural to me.  

I also watched Jake Sully roll around helplessly on the ground, leaving his Na’vi wife and Pandora’s native deity to make  the decisive moves in the final battle. Which, as I’ve pointed out, they win.  If Avatar is indeed racist, it seems to be the human race that takes the hardest knocks in this movie.

No matter what some critics are saying, people of all political stripes are flooding the theatres in record numbers to see Avatar.  The real question about the movie, therefore,  is what makes it so much fun to watch?

Some people play faster than others, even when you put them in charge of moving Jesus’ picture around while the rest of us are Making Stuff.

That’s why we had two projects on our weekend retreat: story boxes, and tchotchke Christmas wreaths.  That’s mine, at the top, a sort of “Where’s Waldo” deal except I called it “When Pigs Fly” instead.

There aren’t any rules for making these, really.  Which is good, because hardly any of us on the retreat are good at following the rules, anyway.

First, we found the cheapest wreath forms possible.  Which you might think were the styrofoam ones, eh, except that you would be WRONG.  The wire forms were cheapest.  So some of us padded them out with newspaper and masking tape, then wrapped fabric or ribbon around the newspaper before gluing on our junk drawer and dollar store tchotchkes.

ML made this one.  She’s a professional ARTIST, it should be noted.   So please note her particularly artful use of a meat thermometer.

ML is the one who came up with the whole tchotchke concept.  She  originally suggested covering a wreath with identifiable objects and then spray-painting the entire thing (cream or white, which she felt were more updated than the gold she’d used in previous years. )

The problem was, these were so silly and wonderful after we put them together that we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to paint them.  Maybe when I pull mine out again next year, I’ll do that…

T-of-the-tiny-gold-boxes took another approach altogether.  After wrapping fabric all around the wire around the outside edge of her wreath, she pasted paper fans to the middle, topping them off with little star and butterfly trim doo-dads.  We called this one “Fan Dance,”  which also happened to be the name of one of her daughter’s ensemble performances.

After all of this whacky creativity performed somewhat under the influence of alcohol (to calm the inner critics, of course), I’ve been in withdrawal ever since, in more than one respects.

On our holiday retreat, some of the women decorated boxes.  I brought along some plain paper mache boxes and some other gift boxes I’d saved.  

One friend decorated three tiny boxes with gold spray paint and things that reminded her of each of her three daughters. 

Another found a gift box with a celophane window and covered it inside out with upholstery samples she’d brought along.  She’s VERY clever that way.

Truevyne took her box apart and made a shadow box out of the bottom of it, which she called “Lipstick sexy icecream”  (correct me if I’ve got it wrong, True)

Truevyne turned the lid of her box into this nifty mini-bulletin board.  An old ear ring makes a terrifically decorative thumb tack.

Sadly, the high school math teacher’s amazing black story box was not complete at press time! 

Next: our tchotke Christmas wreaths!em>

photo from The Snail’s Pace

Last weekend, four friends and I headed for the hills. With a corkscrew. 

We had a little North Carolina mountain farmhouse all to ourselves, each of us with her own upstairs bedroom tucked under the eaves.  

We had a living room with a fire already laid for us in the wood stove, a kitchen, but we didn’t do any cooking.  The kitchen was for coffee in the morning and later, for the cookies everyone brought plus a pot of spiced cider that simmered all day.

There was a dining room too, but we quickly turned it into our play room instead.

We spent the next two days Making Stuff, drinking margaritas in front of our wood stove, and tromping off at regular intervals to get our meals, prepared by *somebody else.*

Heavenly!

As we made things, we hung them up on the wall.  That meant moving Jesus’ portrait around a little, but we figured he wouldn’t mind.  In fact, he’s probably lucky not to have ended up pasted to somebody’s project.

It is always fun to see how creative my friends are.  Next,  I’ll post some close-ups of what we made …

It’s been a month since we made all these hypertufa pots, so today I unwrapped them for the first time.  They should be fully cured.  Now the plan is just to leave them out in the rain all winter to leach out the extra lime before putting plants in next spring.

Hmm.  I’ve seen some gorgeous hypertufa plantings,  but at the moment they look more like a dining set used by the Flintstones…

Nursery plants make terrific birthday presents, but generally speaking, gardening Almostgotit-style is cheap as dirt. 

For example.  My exclusive gardening buckets are recycled kitty litter and laundry detergent tubs.  My herbicide (under the mulch) is a layer of newspapers.  My  exotic fertilizer is home-made compost, ashes from our woodstove, plus a little leftover perlite from my hupertufa experiments.  And most of my plants are gifts, trades, or divisions from elsewhere in my yard. 

I’m a little bit “organic,”  but mostly I’m just a tightwad.

Also, everything I plant must thrive on neglect.  I don’t really water, fertilize, or prune things.

Here are the plants that have survived my abuse so that I could re-use them in this bed:

Bi-color Dianthus
Sun, mostly evergreen
Cold hardiness zone: 4 to 9
6 to tall 12 inches wide
I bought these years ago as little annuals, with no idea they were perennials.  They bloom sporadically from spring – fall, and are easy to divide.

Creeping Phlox
evergreen
zones 3-9
6″ in height and spread out 2′.
I bought these to spill over my rock walls.  They bloom like crazy every spring, and look great all year long.  BULLET-PROOF.  Also pretty easy to divide.

Sedum: “Matrona”
Part shade to sun
Cold hardy zones: 3-9.
Mature size: Height 24 inches, Width: 12-24 inches (30-60 cm).
Flowering period: August to September.  Pink flowers turn bronze and last all winter.
I pulled a small Matrona (looks just like the more common “Autumn Joy” sedum) out of a mixed pot someone gave me and have been dividing it, replanting it, giving it away, etc., ever since.  Four-season interest, fast-growing without being a pest: what’s not to love about Sedum Matrona?

Sedum Sarmentosum: aka ‘Trailing Stonecrop” aka “Star Sedum” aka “Graveyard Moss”
Part shade to sun
Cold hardiness zones: 4 to 8
Covered with yellow flowers in the spring
I found a tiny piece of this in my backyard and have been using it all over the place.  This will grow about anywhere a piece of it falls, drapes beautifully from planters, and can be a tiny bit pesty if you want to get rid of it.  Makes a great ground cover over one of my rotting stumps, however, rendering the thing almost elegant.  Why pay for stump removal when there’s Star Sedum?

Yellow Iris
Sun
A friend asked me to “babysit” her collection of irises in my garden during a protracted moving process, and I just stuck the corms wherever I could fit them in.  The irises spread, my friend took some back (she’s welcome to take more!), and what was left in this particular flower bed was a shorter yellow variety that just happened to be perfect. 

Ruellia brittoniana: “Mexican Petunia”
Tender evergreen perennial
Sun
Hardiness zones 8-10. Marginally hardy in Zone 7 if protected and mulched. Can be invasive in very warm climates.
3 feet tall
Stems are very easy to root in moist soil. Over time the plant multiplies and the original stem becomes a colony.
These are wacky and fun.   Purple flowers look just like petunias on long stems.   I snagged them — as just a bunch of sticks last April — for free in a neighborhood plant trade, and am holding them in my whiskey barrel garden until I see them thru a second season.  They would be perfect with the yellows and pinks in this bed, though, and next spring I’ll try them.  In case they don’t winter over in my zone 6-7 yard,  I’ll save some cuttings as well. 

Almostgotit’s birthday present:  One humongous heap of steaming, stinking black mulch plus two indentured slaves with shovels for a day.

The three of us planted the things I bought WITH A COUPON the other day, plus the stuff I’d divided or moved from elsewhere (more about that in tomorrow’s post)

 Here’s the scoop on the new guys in the yard:

Encore Azalea, “Autumn Ruby”

Light shade – sun

• Mature height: 2.5 feet Spread: 3 feet
• Blooms spring AND summer, deep ruby single flowers
• Click here for more about Encore Azaleas http://www.encoreazalea.com/encore/index.cfm

Juniper, “Gold Coast

• Evergreen, yellow foliage
• Cold hardiness zones: 3-9
• Light needs: full sun
• Mature height: 3 ft tall, 4 ft wide

Physocarpus, “Summer Wine”

• Light Needs: Sun
• Cold hardiness zone: 4-9
• Height: 5-6 feet; Spread 5-6 feet
• Wine red foliage ; white-pink flowers mid-summer

Weigela, “Midnight Wine”

• Light Needs: Sun
• Cold hardiness zone: 5-9
• Height: 12-18 inches; spread 18-24 inches
• Purple foliage, bright pink flowers

Abelia, “Rose Creek”

• Evergreen: leaves become purplish in cold weather.
• Light needs: Full to partial sun
• Cold Hardiness Zone: 6-9
• Light needs: Full to partial sun
• Mature size: Low mounding shrub 2 to 3 ft. tall, 3 to 4 ft. wide.
• Flower Color: White
• Blooms: Fragrant white flowers spring through summer.

Hypertufa is an artificial stone ( Named for “tufa,” a natural, porous limestone), used to make light-weight, weather-proof garden ornaments and pots.    And you can make it your very own self! 

Hypertufa Party!!

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try making hypertufa pots with a couple of my crazier, more experimental friends.  Fall is a good time to make hypertufa, as the pots need to cure in a couple stages before you use them.

First, I did some research for the best hypertufa recipe, the best hypertufa videos, (here’s another good hypertufa video) and I looked at lots and lots of hypertufa photos online for inspiration.   We adapted our own procedure from the version found here on The Artistic Garden.

Photos were all taken in the Almostgotit Hypertufa Factory!

Hypertufa Recipe

• 1 part Portland cement (NOT concrete or quikrete!!)
• 1½ parts peat
• 1½ parts perlite (or vermiculite – which heavier, & adds some sparkle)

HOW MUCH?  Two 90-lb bags of Portland cement, 10-15 lbs of perlite, and 2 cubic feet of peat moss made about 10 medium-sized planters (14-20″ diameter bowls)

PREP & SAFETY

•  Wear clothes you don’t mind getting dirty

It’s also recommended to launder your work clothes right after you’re done, and take off your shoes before entering house.  I didn’t get as dirty as I thought.  An apron worked well… lugging things around got my front dirty.

•  Wear a fine-particle dust mask & waterproof gloves

The dust from any ‘tufa mixture is very caustic and definitely can damage your lungs if you breathe it in. Once you’ve got everything mixed and have added the water, then you can take off your mask.

Ingredients are caustic & not skin-friendly. Wear heavy-duty rubber dishwashing or rubber work gloves when mixing dry ingredients and when handling the wet mixture. Another caution: even handling hypertufa that has cured enough to unmold but is still damp can cause skin burns.  Disposable latex gloves work great when applying and detailing hypertufa, allowing you more dexterity than the heavy gloves used for mixing.

•  Last but not least … yes you should wear safety goggles!

We didn’t.  Bad, bad, bad.

Additional hints:

• If you’re mixing up a large quantity of one of these hypertufa recipes, divide the mixture into smaller batches to make it easier to blend.
• Measure the dry ingredients into a large container such as a wheelbarrow. Use a shovel, concrete trowel, garden hand trowel or similar for mixing.  WE GAVE UP AND USED OUR HANDS.  EASIER!
• Make sure all ingredients are thoroughly blended before adding water. Mix and blend more than you think you need to!
• Add The Water Slowly … You Can Always Add More  WORDS TO LIVE BY.
• Next, take a 10 minute break from the whole mixing process. Let the water “soak in” a bit.  This is a good time to serve coffee and chocolate (take your yucky gloves and shoes off, first!)
• Test your mixture for the proper consistency (cottage cheese consistency) by taking a handful of mix. Squeeze it into a ball that will hold together when you open your hand. A little bit of water can slightly ooze between your fingers.  Remember that this mixture must be able to cling to your mold and stay put and not start sagging. 
• How do you know what is enough or not enough water?  The APPROXIMATE amount of water needed MAY or MAY NOT be 1 to 1-1/2 parts water (in relation to the dry ingredients “parts”).  Be on the safe side, slowly add your water to your thoroughly-blended dry mix. Add water until you have a damp mixture. One that is not crumbly but also not oozing with water.

 MAKING A HYPERTUFA BOWL

• We found it easiest to cover the exterior of a bowl. Line or cover your wood, plastic, or metal bowl with a large plastic garbage bag.
• For a portable work surface, put another plastic bag over a piece of scrap plywood (this bag can later be turned inside-out to cover your finished bowl while it’s drying!
• Turn your plastic-covered bowl upside down on your plastic-covered work surface so you’re able to cover the bottom of the bowl with hypertufa. Begin building the mixture around the base of the mold, gradually building up the sides and over the top. Pat and press, pat and press the mixture as you work along. The desired thickness of ‘tufa is about 1½ inches for SMALL containers. 
• Make sure the top and edges are as thick as the sides. You don’t want weak areas in your bowl due to the hypertufa not being applied thickly enough.
• Keep the base of the bowl as flat and smooth as you can.  This means the top of your project, which will become the bottom when it’s flipped over.
• Use a bamboo barbeque skewer, or similar thin object, marked at 1-1/2 inches, to poke through the ‘tufa, allowing you to check the thickness of the walls as you are applying it. This will help insure that you are keeping your entire project 1-1/2″ thick.  It is harder to predict the wall’s thickness than you might think!
• When you’re finished, if you desire a smoother look to your hypertufa trough, smooth the surfaces with semi-wet fingers.  Patting the surface also works well to compact the hypertufa and force water up to smooth the surface.  Turning the worksurface bag inside out so it goes around the bowl instead at this point is helpful, too — you can use the bag to pull up and shape the bowl from the outside before sealing the bowl up inside of it. 
• Create drainage holes: using short lengths of ½” – 1″ dia. dowels, poke the dowels through the ‘tufa until they touch the base of your mold. The larger the trough, the more drainage holes I’d suggest you include. If you don’t have dowels, use whatever you have on hand that can create holes — no one is going to see them anyway when your trough is planted.  They don’t have to be perfectly shaped.  

CURING YOUR HYPERTUFA

Stage 1 (2 to 4 Days)

• It’s helpful to build your pot on a moveable work surface (see above) so you can move it to the drying area without disturbing it too much.
• Carefully place your object into a large black plastic trash bag (or similar) and seal it up tightly. (If your object is too heavy to lift, then do your best to cover with black plastic. Keep in mind you are trying to retain moisture to help the object dry slowly.)
• Many ‘tufa makers will thoroughly mist the object with water before sealing up the bag. As I’ve said elsewhere on these pages, there is no exact science to anything regarding hypertufa. That includes the “best way” to cure it.
• Seal the bag as air tight as possible. We used our bags to finalize the shape of our bowls, and liked the stone-like lines the plastic made when pressed against the hypertufa.  You can inflate the bag a little to keep it off the surface while drying, if you prefer.
• Carry your pot to a spot you are able to leave it undisturbed during the curing.
• After approximately 24 hours you will want to test your new, and still curing, hypertufa object. Carefully open the bag (or uncover) and see if your fingernail can scratch off any ‘tufa. If you can, seal it back up and wait another 12-36 hours. When you can’t really scratch any off (without some difficulty), you’re ready to unmold your object. Your object is still a bit fragile! Remove from the mold carefully.
• If you want to add texture to the object’s surface, you need to do that now before you move on to the next step.
• Caution: when handling damp pieces you should wear your gloves!  Gingerly place your object back into the plastic bag and seal tightly. You can now keep your object at room temperature.

Curing: Stage 2 (1 week – 1 month or more)

• Continue to keep it moist, misting occasionally if needed. Allow it to cure for at least another week but the longer it can slowly cure in a moist environment, the better.
• At this point, most ‘tufa makers will keep the object bagged up for a month or more. (I’ve seen it written that a one month cure time can result in 25% stronger ‘tufa).
• Your new garden art object can be removed and left until it is completely dried … you’ll know if it sounds hollow when tapped.

Curing: Stage 2 (1 week – 1 month or more)

• Continue to keep it moist, misting occasionally if needed. Allow it to cure for at least another week but the longer it can slowly cure in a moist environment, the better.
• At this point, most ‘tufa makers will keep the object bagged up for a month or more. (a one month cure time can result in 25% stronger ‘tufa).
• Your new garden art object can be removed and left until it is completely dried … you’ll know if it sounds hollow when tapped.

Curing: Final step: getting rid of excess lime from the Portland Cement

• Cured hypertufa is very alkaline due to the Portland cement. If you have ever seen a white powdery residue on new cement, that is the free lime leaching out.  Most agree that the lime is toxic to most plants and therefore needs to be leached from the object if you are going to use it as a planter.
• EITHER:  soak ‘tufa planter in a larger container of fresh water, changing water every day for 3 days. (Note: The lime can still burn your skin so wear your gloves.)
• Or If the planter is too large to fit into another container, hose it down once or twice a day for 3-5 days.
• Or best of all, use my approach and leave the planter outside for a few months, allowing the lime to leach out naturally by being rained upon .   After all, there’s still plenty of time before I’ll need them in the spring.

Update, Dec 1: To see what the finished pots look like, click here!

Cross-posted at BlogHer.com