imagining a garden

We spent a lot of time this week thinking about the landscape/gardens/habitat around and inside tin box this week. We laid out some of our coral rock (the bounty from our septic tank installation) to give us an idea of the broad outlines of the raised planters we want to build on the south side of the house. Holly started sketching the front in perspective to help visualize the relationship between plantings, stone and ground. We visited a neighbor with a terrific vegetable and fruit garden, and started to fantasize about what we could grow with our abundant sunshine and rainfall. We thought about what kinds of plants we can grow above a septic drainage field, and which ones we can't. And then Faichild Tropical Botanic Garden hosted their annual flowering tree sale...

Arbor Day

Happy Arbor Day!

shade

The cheapest technology in the house is borrowing shade from existing trees. We deviated from the US Green Building Council's LEED standards when we included lots of glazing on walls that face east and west. LEED's concern is that the low sun in the morning and afternoon brings excessive heat into a building during the hot months. We recognized, however, that the existing trees in the park to the west would provide a lot of shade in the afternoon, while our east neighbor's trees would shade the house in the morning. The photo at left shows the living/dining room shaded by existing trees, even before we add the roof panels.

courtyard

With the purlins in place and the roofs and eaves taking shape, we've got a better sense of the scale of the courtyard and its relationship to the major interior spaces. At left, a photo through the dining and living room into the courtyard and the dense vegetation of the back yard. The large (8 feet by 11 feet) openings between the courtyard and the living/dining room will have gliding glass doors to maintain as much visual transparency as possible, even when closed. When open, the glass doors will help join the courtyard and living/dining room into a single expansive space, defined by the lush border of trees and plants at the edge of the yard (while in the other direction, the park across the street will feel like a verdant extension of the courtyard and living/dining room). So, how does the kitchen fit into this?

about that tree

Daniel Macias stopped by the site today to supervise the trimming of our sapadillo (or sapote) tree. Danny owns The Billy Goat, and has been maintaining the grass around our site during construction (they also maintained the yard around the previous house on the site before we started construction). They’re helping us preserve as much of the sapadillo as possible. This tree, along with the big avocado in the back yard, were part of the plan of tin box from the beginning. The sapadillo works with the cantilevered roof to frame the patio space facing the park across the street, and also helps hide the big electric pole just outside our living room. It’s a beautiful tree, and, if we’re lucky, it might start producing fruit.

grading

Had a site visit today with some of our students from FIU. That's them in the shade, under the avocado tree in the rear yard. The big development at the site is that the contractor graded the lot by spreading out the piles of excavated soil (you might remember the large piles left around the perimeter of the site when they excavated the foundation). The soil is now at the approximate level it will be when the house is complete, which gives us a slightly better sense of how the house will sit on the site when it is complete. For example, we can see the scale and proportions of the courtyard and the patio a little better now (the patio is to the right in this image, under the sapote tree and facing the park across the street.

productive landscapes, avocado edition

The season’s first avocado, rescued from a pile of excavated soil and rock. Friend of tin box and expert on the unconscionable labor practices of the deep South, Alex Lichtenstein, points us to an excellent commentary on local industrial-scale agriculture by Mark Bittman, who also has a good blog post on the environmental consequences of meat production that’s worth reading. Bittman links to a bunch of recent articles on the environmental and health problems generated by meat production and consumption, including a nice piece by the brilliant Ezra Klein.

productive landscapes, lime edition

Stopped by the job site today to check on the slab, and took a quick look at the trees. While we've taken pains to protect the avocado and sapote trees on site, we really didn't invest much energy in the sad little Charlie Brown-esque citrus tree in the back yard. The excavating crew buried its trunk in soil and coral rock. Which, apparently, was just the fertilizer it needed, because now this sad little tree is producing more fruit in one season than in the last three years combined. Woo hoo! Now all we need is a tamarind tree and we'll be able to produce our own Major Grey Chutney. Pictured after the break, our first glass of home-grown limeade.

mango season

We're big enthusiasts of the growing urban agriculture movement, especially when it comes in the readymade and maintenance-free form of already planted trees all around the house.

Mango season is here, and it's an awesome time to appreciate the broad range of mango varieties. The Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden alone has almost 400 varieties, and we're told there are many more spread throughout the tropics. We have three different varieties around the house we're renting, and their fruit range from fibrous and tart to creamy and sweet. Plus, they ripen at different times, so we'll have fresh mangos for over a month.

The new house has mature avocado and sapote trees, and access to the neighbor's mangos and the park's coconuts. We'll probably plant papayas, too.

mango season

Pictured: mangoes ripening on neighbor's tree, hanging right over where our rainwater cistern is going to sit. In the distance, the large avocado tree we're preserving, and which will act as a focus of the courtyard.

Not pictured: four hungry peeps. If the mango tree is always going to produce fruit around Passover, we may have to alter our traditional menu of affliction.