Passive Photography - Spectators

An hour was spent outside the grounds of an amateur lawn tennis tournament capturing photographic images. The initial intent was to photograph muscles in action, which can be seen in an earlier post. There was plenty of inaction there, too. A change of mindset was needed.

Players stopped to rest and spectators outside the field of action created opportunities to think differently, a pastoral artistic mode. 

Rest between play 

Spectators with connections to players

Spectators with chance biker

Tell me a story about what you think is going on in each of the above images. 


©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

Built Another Potato Tower

Quite a bit of leaves remained after adding them to my square foot plot and filling up my potato tower.  I decided I like potatoes and another tower was in order.  I purchased a 50'/15m roll of 3'/.9m wide fencing. The fencing has 3"/76mm x 2"/50mm rectangular openings, as did the previous fencing used to build the first tower. This fencing differs in a few ways. The wire is a smaller gauge. It almosts feels soft, much easier to bend. The long side of the 2" x 3" openings changed orientation 90º so that the 3"/76mm dimension went from horizontal to vertical. 


I am guessing the gauge of the wire decreased to keep the price of the fencing low. I have no idea why the orientation rotated 90º. In any event, I constructed another tower using the same 64"/1.6m length of fencing. I cut the extra rectangle in order to attach both ends of the fencing to each other. I cut another wire coat hanger and made 5"/127mm staples to pin down the towers to the soil.


I changed the cloth used to surround the tower. I used all the remaining landscaping fabric on the first tower. I scrounged in my garage for something to use. I found a black single bed sheet in my rag pile. Bed sheets are saved to be reused before selling to the rag shop or entering the trash stream. (I am the son of parents that lived through the Great Depression. We save rags, aluminum, copper, screws, nails and lumber of sizable usable lengths. Our family has been recycling our whole lives. We are no strangers to the rag/scrap shop.)


I draped the sheet around the tower and overlapped where the ends of the fencing were joined. One edge of the sheet touched the ground and the remaining cloth flows over the top of the tower. I then placed 6"/15cm of leaves in the bottom of the tower. I didn't have any store bought potato seeds, so I opened my pantry to  scrounge for a suitable replacement.


I found a few sprouted Russet potatoes that were living under a large sweet white onion. They was easy to spot. The sprouts were a sickly white 6"/15cm and reaching around the Oso Sweet onion from both sides as though hugging the Oso in a lyonnaised sort of way, straining towards what little light entered the pantry.

I took the sprouting potatoes to the tower. This time instead of cutting the wire at the 6" level, I cut the sheet and bent the wire of one rectangle and squeezed in on potato leaving the 6" sprouts out in the sunlight. I did this again for the other potatoes. I expected to return to Lowe's to purchase more All Blue and Yukon Gold potato seeds to fill the rest of the tower. (I later discovered at Lowe's that the blue were dried and smelled bad and no gold remained. I purchased a bag of Russets.) The potatoes were planted Mon., May14.

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

Make Wire Supports For Your Garden

There are times when plants in your garden will need support. This post will show you how to make wire plant supports from readily available wire fencing.

The snow peas in my plot will soon need support. These supports were made for snow peas and can be used for other plants. The idea is that the plant will grew through the top of the support. The wire cube will provide the needed support.

There remained a piece of wire fencing from the no dig potato cage blogged about earlier. The rectangles in the fencing measure 2"(50mm) x 3"(76mm). The roll of fencing is 36"(91cm) wide.

Cut the fencing from one end so that there is 12"(38cm) of closed rectangles by the width of the roll, 36"(91cm).

Cut the wire midway into the next rectangle.

There will be 2"(50mm) of extra wire on each side.

Cut as many 3'(91cm) x 1'(38cm) pieces as supports needed.

A 12"(38cm) length of wood is needed to fold the wire sides. 

Source:onlinetoolsupply.com 

Use the wood block as a metal brake is used to bend sheet metal.

Bend both sides of the support that there are three sides of a cube measuring 12"(38cm) on each side.

Next, place the supports over each square planted with peas.

I turned the supports that I may easily reach in them from one side of the plot. With all the Norway Maples in my yard I need to clear out maple seeds constantly. Weeding will be possible, too.

 This corner support I turned 90º because it felt right.

I will update when the peas grow above the wire supports.

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved