This old house.

I never got around to doing holiday cards this year, but if I had done one, this picture of Henry demolishing the bathroom would have been a good candidate for a Happy New Year card.

Progress on the house has been slow, but steady. Someone recently told us it would be easier to build a house from scratch than to do what we are doing. I agree. When we bought the house we thought we would be able to renovate room by room, but it turned out to be impossible. We have gutted almost the entire interior on all three floors at this point. We removed the old gas baseboard heating system and replaced it with radiant floor tubing and had to demolish the ceiling on the first and second floors to do that. The house had drop ceilings in it and when we opened them up, we found that a previous owner had literally chopped out the original walls at the drop ceiling height and destroyed the beautiful plaster crown moldings.  Aside from two plaster ceiling medallions, nothing was left worth saving. So it all came down and we were able to run the radiant tubing on the underside of the floor joists.  We are in the process of replacing all the old electric. We have a new panel and actual switches now on the first floor. Eventually the second and third floors will be electrified. We do have a few plugs and switches now, but they all need to be rerouted, since we have completely changed the floor plans.  By the time we are finished we will have also replaced most of the plumbing, since all the sinks and tubs in the house are in different locations than they were when we bought the house. 

The basement has some new walls coming in- this will eventually be my art studio. 

This is a good view of the radiant tubing and the new electric, along with my new archway in progress.


We are working on the bathrooms on both the second and third floors right now because we can't move on to other projects until the plumbing is rerouted. The third floor bathroom needs to be rearranged and the tub and sink moved so that A) the bathroom is accessible from the hall, and B) because the tub plumbing is hanging in the middle of the kitchen ceiling below it. Once we redo that bathroom we can create Henry's room, our room, and the kitchen below. And electric needs to be run to all these places and it is much easier to do before drywall goes up. Sigh.

Third floor bathroom after Henry got done with that wall:



Second floor bathroom that is framed and almost ready for tile and wainscotting. I am working on this bathroom quite hard right now because I just need one finished room in this house. And it is only 4' x 4'. It does seem possible. But of course I can't finish the ceiling until the upstairs bathroom plumbing has been rerouted. Which means that the upstairs bathroom may be done first. A never ending conundrum...



In the meantime, here's my tub in what will eventually be the dining room:



And another one, under the stairwell which I am using for my paper recycling bin. I don't even know why we have this one, other than my neighbor was throwing it out, and I just can't let a good clawfoot go to waste.



And yes, that staircase needs to be replaced, but it will have to wait until we have rerouted that tub.

Happy New Year!

Yep, I’m back on the blog roll after quite a long hiatus. Sometime back in June or July of ‘09 I got really depressed about the state of our home progress and gardening failures, and quite frankly, just couldn’t muster any enthusiasm to write about it. Recently however, filmmaker Jay Weichun featured us in his documentary, Growing Food on Staten Island, and at the premier of the movie, a couple of people asked me about the blog. So, here we are, back by popular demand! Mostly, I hope it will help me keep track and appreciate the small steps we are taking in our lives to create a more sustainable home. Even if they sometimes seem like very, very small steps.

I think I last left the blog in the summer after helping to start the community garden in Stapleton, and as my garden at home was doing quite nicely. Unfortunately, the community garden pretty much tanked due to various reasons, and my gardening efforts at home had their ups and downs. My most beautiful plant this year was Pineapple Sage. I picked this seedling up at Gerardi’s one day and it turned into the most spectacular plant of the season. At least five feet tall and it bloomed and bloomed these beautiful red flowers up until mid-November. Virtually everything else in my garden was wilted and dead by then except for this glorious plant which seemed to thrive as the weather got cooler. And it made a lovely pineapple flavored tea, bath tonic, and cooking spice. I’m sorry I didn’t get around to drying any leaves. I half expected it to never die; but then one day, sadly, the frost finally got to it.




The seed catalogs have been arriving in the mailbox and in the spirit of the new year and regrowth and regeneration, I couldn’t help myself but order a whole mess of seeds. I am hoping to do a more ornamental edible garden next year. Nothing crazy this time, just more diversified beds rather than beds with a single crop each. It has become increasingly evident that we cannot grow enough food to sustain our family throughout the entire year. At least, not with full time jobs, and a kid, and the house construction, and dreams of making art. Trying to be a full time farmer on top of everything else almost broke me this year. I decided that in order to sustain my sanity, we have to be moderate in what we try to do. I can grow what I can, and what I can enjoy, and try to do my best to supplement our diet with somewhat decent choices at the lame grocery stores on the island. But I digress.

Last year I experimented with some wacky tomato trellises, one of which I had planned to wear but disastrously did not account for the weight of dirt once you apply water to it. The rounded arch that we built out of embroidery hoops and bamboo was also unsuccessful because the water just drained right out of it and I ended up with dry, dry plants that produced little edible fruit. Apparently on both projects I forgot the age old sculptors rule, “gravity sucks.” But I still like my trellis and think it is pretty. Perhaps I will just grow vining plants up it this year. Peas, or some of the purple pole beans I just ordered.

Other gardening efforts that were less than successful last summer: the squashes succumbed to some kind of fungus, the cabbages were eaten by some sort of beetle, and the tomatoes cross pollinated with each other and I got a mish-mash-brandywine-wild cherry-old Virginia hybrid that was ok but not great.

On the other hand, peas were spectacular, as were green beans and broccoli. I even got quite a few habanero and jalapeno peppers which I haven’t had much luck with in the past. I tried carrots in containers this year and they were much better than the ones I had planted in-ground the year before. Also, now that everything else has died, I am noticing that there is an nice onion patch still there that I had forgotten about. I don’t know if I should dig them up or just leave them till spring. I think it is ok to leave them in the ground.  I'm sure it is frozen solid at this point anyway.

So with the new year, starts the new blog, and hopefully a new, more positive outlook on my part. Stay tuned next time for news of our ongoing construction projects inside. And trust me, if my gardening projects last year were disappointing, wait till you see the mess we have made in the house!

Small Gifts

For about a week, the peas gave us about 20 pods a day. Which equals about a half cup when you shell them. Even though it doesn't seem like much, searching through the tower of peas for ripe pods, picking, shelling, and finally eating them is so very, very satisfying.

The blueberries are gifting us this week:

Extreme Gardening

I spent the weekend in and out of a feverish state which may have accounted for these strange gardening practices:




This is a cylindrical trellis made of bamboo, embroidery hoops, steel; then wrapped in clear plastic shrink wrap. I inserted plastic pots at the end of the plastic to hold in a compost and peat moss mixture. Then I planted four heirloom tomato plants that will grow from the top of it as hanging vines. German Queen, yellow pear, brandywine and beefsteak. At the bottom are cucumbers and cantaloupes that I hope will grow up the trellis. I have no idea if this is going to work at all. My biggest fear is that a heavy wind will blow the whole thing over, since now it is very top heavy. We'll see how it does in the next few days and then I may put in some more supports.

Th next really wacky project is a wearable sculpture that I woke up early on Sunday morning with an intense desire to build. Once upon a time I did a performance art piece in which I covered myself in lightbulbs and did this crazy electrified dance. It was cool. Another time I made some armatures for a sculptural performance piece about breast cancer which never came to fruition but I still had the parts lying around. So one thing led to another, and I used the steel harness from the lightbulb thing and attached the "boobs" from the other thing and then I covered the new amalgamation in green shrink wrap plastic and decided it would be great if I planted tomatoes in it.



My hopes are that the tomato vines will grow all over it. Oh- the tomatoes are several varieties of heirloom cherry tomatoes.



I know it is very wierd. But really, I had the flu and a high fever.

Visiting the frog.

I spent my 40th birthday at Chuck E Cheese in Staten Island. Not to say it wasn't fun, but I enjoyed the real celebration upstate visiting a another larger-than-life critter. Last summer we made a frog oven out of cob (adobe). It's been buried under snow all winter, but this weekend we unwrapped it and fired it up:



As you can see, it had alot of cracks but the frog itself was basically intact. After we completely burned the inaugural loaf of bread, we went to work mixing a clay, manure, and plaster mix to coat the whole thing and patch the cracks.





We'll see how long the plaster lasts. This is our first attempt at making anything out of cob, so like most of the things we do, we are just winging it and seeing what happens. So far so good.

The garden is growing.

Our backyard garden as it looks now:


The radishes have bloomed which means they are probably inedible, but the flowers are so pretty:


I am trying to grow cucumbers up one side of the bamboo trellis and cantaloupes up the other side. We'll see how it goes:


Eggplants in the tires this year and pumpkins behind them:


The peas are rockin. Already in bloom so we will have harvest soon:

End of May

It's the end of May and things are mostly planted in both gardens. There is still more to put in. My tomatoes for instance, are a bit too small. But they will go in soon. I'm having more fun in my backyard garden this year. Last year it seemed like so much work. Now it seems like nothing compared to the farm we have going around the corner. I find the work in the backyard a relief compared to the back-breaking hoeing and tilling and building that we are doing with Harri. I'm happy to be doing the community garden, but it is not really my garden. Really it is Harri's and we are just doing his bidding. Which is good and bad.

I would like to spend more time experimenting with some sculptural gardening ideas. More structures with things growing in and on and around them.

Today I think we will go to the community garden and try to figure out what to do about a watering system.

Busy weekend.

Our house and garden(s) were a flurry of activity this weekend. On Saturday morning, Scott met Harri at the community garden to get a compost delivery. The City of New York delivered 18 cubic yards of composted manure courtesy the Bronx Zoo. It's a giant mountain of dirt.




Later that day, the Council on the Arts and Humanities of Staten Island (COAHSI) sponsored a workshop on Carribean Herbalism at the garden. Harri talked about herbs and gardening and visitors helped in the garden. Our friend Tattfoo Tan is doing a conceptual art piece about gardening and food so he was there snapping photos and recording conversation also. We had a nice turnout. It was great to see so many people in the garden working. Neighbors came by and joined in. One neighbor even brought us water, then sodas, and later, bananas. Kids were hanging out of the windows watching. Even a couple of teenage boys asked if they could help out. Henry worked really hard in the garden and then he and his new friend, Gwen, conquered the giant dirt pile and pitched a homemade flag made out of a stick and a plastic home depot bag on the top. They ran up and rolled down the pile until they were covered head to toe in dirt.





On Sunday, we gardened at home a bit and then made a cool bean trellis out of bamboo and found embroidery hoops. Somehow I think this idea is going to expand in the yard over the next few weeks.

ghosts

Against my better judgement, I've recently joined Facebook. But I do have to admit I am enjoying the experience. It is amazing to reconnect with old friends. One friend, who I haven't seen in roughly 30 years is sending me hollyhock seeds from her grandmother's garden circa 1972. Amazing.

It is strange to see so many people from the past with present lives. Grown up with children and grandchildren. Only in my memory they are teenagers. Like living ghosts.

One old friend posted pictures of her life in North Carolina in a picture perfect log cabin in the woods with stream and dog and beautiful children. Another friend is living a glamorous life in LA. Not that I begrudge them beautiful, happy lives, but it is weird to imagine so many different life scenarios. In another reality I could totally go for that life in the woods, or that glamorous Hollywood life.

But I'm here in scrappy Staten Island in a house with jacks holding up the floors and no kitchen. And it is good. It's not glamorous or lovely, but it is good. My friend Ciro said to me the other day that he was glad he lived here because at least everything didn't look the same. I was driving down Forest Ave today thinking about that. Thinking about our visit to Las Vegas last fall. Everything in Las Vegas (outside of the strip) is beige. Beige houses, beige shopping centers, beige strip malls. Beige beige beige. Forest Ave is nothing exciting, but at least it is not beige.

Stapleton especially is anti-beige. It is dirty, gritty and beautiful. It reminds me of the east village back in the days when it looked like a war zone with crumbling down old buildings filled with junkies. Except the streets are alive with well, life. Soccer playoffs, streetball games, kids laughing, crazy people hollering, church choirs singing, people gardening...


Scott, Henry and our gardening mentor and friend, Harri boxing in the herb garden area.


Me, Harri and new friend Missy that I met on (where else?) Facebook.

The new farm.

We officially broke ground on the new community garden. It is a 50 x 100 ft lot, which by city standards is quite large. By country standards, it's tiny. Though standing on that rocky dirt full of garbage it seems like a giant job. It's hard to know quite where to begin. But we picked a spot and started digging. It took us about an hour to till a 4 x 10 ft section. Neighbors came by and talked to us which was good. No one threw any trash on us from the building next door, also a good thing.





Things we found in the dirt: a few mystery bones (cat?), a small doll, a hand mirror with the Puerto Rican flag printed on it, and a pair of panties.