Category Archives: Garden/Furniture

Design, Garden/Furniture

Staghorn Plant Stand

staghorn fern stand drawingA stand for a top-heavy plant

Lisa found a really nice, large staghorn fern, and needed something to support it. Staghorn ferns are mounted on boards, and this one weighs about 30 lbs. It is mounted on a 2′ square board, the plant is about 3′ wide and 4′ high.

I struggled with this design, because the weight of the fern tends to tip it forward. I finally came up staghorn fern stand photowith a design that resembles an artists easel. There is a frame with a ledge for the fern’s board, a diagonal brace for stiffness to the back and long feet extend out in front to keep it from tipping forward.

I worry about wood rotting when it is in direct contact with concrete and water. For this design, I used some trex plastic wood scraps and stainless steel screws to create rot-proof feet that lift the frame off the ground.

I built this before I had a website, and didn’t take any pictures at the time. It is placed under the stair to our staghorn fern stand detail toptwo story deck, and is hard to photograph. I had to get into that area recently, so I tried to take a few pictures in the cramped space. Hopefully, they give you an idea of how it turned out.

Top                      drawings
Second from top  overall picture from the side
Third from top      top of stand and staghorn on board
Fourth from top    long legs to keep from tipping
Fifth from top       detail of brace and trex feet
Bottom                detail of top of frame

staghorn fern stand foot detail
staghorn foot detail close-up

 

staghorn fern stand holder top detail
Design, Garden/Furniture

Slab Table

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Using up some scraps

We needed to replace a small table in our garden that had developed a noticeable sag. We had a 2″ thick pine slab, left over from a willow bench that had fallen apart. We thought we’d use it for the top of the new table. I made the base out of redwood scraps left over from our trellis.

Top: drawings

Second – fifth: top,side, end

Bottom: table on the back porch

 

 

Cartoons, Design, Garden/Furniture

Worm Pee

A character logo

Spring is approaching, and around this time gardeners  think about fertilizing their plants. When knowledgeable gardeners think about fertilizing plants, they think of worm pee. And those lucky enough to have received a gift of it in the past think of Lisa’s Worm Pee, the champagne of fertilizers.

Lisa gets the worm pee from her worm farm. It is a plastic crate with a valve at the bottom. Vegetable scraps go in, the worms do their thing, and worm pee comes out.

Faithful readers will remember the love of 1950’s character logos that inspired my Almond Baker. This year, filled with springtime enthusiasm and silliness, I created a character logo and slogan for Lisa’s famous fertilizer. Not only does it tell you what’s in the bottle, it also answers the perennial question “How do you get the pee from the worms?”