Please Clean Up After Your Pets

Sign at Prospect Park located in Wheatridge, Colorado

From Establishing  Boundaries to an Invitation

This blog is inspired by the need for me to find a solution to the south boundary of my property becoming a dumping ground for local dog poo.

And perhaps it also satisfies my often times aesthetics celebration of the sophomoric, like finding a 'ready made' theme for a blog from the act of a dog pooing.

I have observed passer byes with their dogs, pausing and circling their furry wards in the 'zone' in order to stimulate them to use this narrow plot as a doggy toilet.

Cool, but this is taking place in the front of my yard. I have children; I have dogs. I love both; but I think that dog poo left UN-attended and children are not a 'good mix.'

I am not responding with anger.

I can see how this area next to a street, not quite landscaped, may be interpreted as a free dumping zone. I have had conversations with 'offenders' and felt nothing but regret in becoming a Mr. Wilson. I have observed often that the dog walkers are surprised,  and often quite apologetic. 

So I thought, "how could I gently ask people to clean up after their animals?" The solution presented itself after a lesson from my Photoshop teacher, Marti, who works in graphics and proclaimed that the QR code is 'graphically ugly'. Being that I love parody and a challenge, I started looking for an opportunity to use this graphic social phenomenon in a work, and make it beautiful.

QR Sign Installed

I made the sign and wrote the blog to ask my neighbors to pick up after their animals, and I am using the QR code playfully.  I am reflecting on the game-like modality and effectiveness of the QR code and inviting my neighbors to play with their cell phones in order get the message.


I chose to link the QR code to my blog in order to invite them to the 2nd Use site. I hope this becomes a means to share my ideas, or possibly answer questions, that they may have about my work in the yard.

Even though the QR sign is a social networking kinda deal, if you wish to enjoy the true social, please feel free to stop if you see me working in the yard for a jaw and a tail wag.

FYI :
There are some bags under the sign if you need them, and again thank you in advance for your collaboration.

Sustainablity?

From Fertility to Futility

First Blooms on My Peach Tree

As part of my exploration into micro urban agriculture, I decided to create a mini orchard in my yard. I liked the idea of fruit adding diversity to my pallet and my property. The trees are placed on the west end of my front yard running north to south and they will act as wind break for the easterly winds we get off the Rockies. The trees, when mature, won't shade the yard until early evening--a good fit for newly learned the concepts in permaculture .

So I have planted a number of fruit trees over the past three years; including, one plum,  cherry, pear,   two apple trees, and a peach tree grafted with three different varieties. The peach is my favorite tree fruit. Being an early bloomer, my peach was the first tree to flower that I have planted.  I was so excited about the esthetics and the show of fertility with the possibility of fruit.

My joy was soon replaced by a pragmatic concern; I thought about the timing of the color burst, it was the last week of March and in this climate zone we are at the risk of frost until a couple of weeks into May. A frost would kill the fruit buds. I learned this fact when I researched growing peaches in my area. The local average success of harvesting peaches is one out of every five years, again due to our false start springs. It would be a heart breaker to lose my first crop of fruit.

I shared my concerns with my fellow micro horticulturist, Shelley, and she mentioned that when she lived in the Bay Area, her neighbors would hang the old-fashion Christmas lights on the branches of their citrus trees, hoping that the heat emitted could save their blooming trees being threatened by the later spring frost.
 
Well sure enough the weather forecast predicted temperature in the mid 20°F.  I couldn't find any old Christmas lights for two reasons,  they are out of season,  and I switched my festive lights over to the lower carbon foot print LED lights for our holiday decorations. So I improvised with a piece of crop cover cloth and a 40 watt light bulb, in a utility light fixture.  I put in a thermometer to evaluate my results.

The heated cocoon

Well it worked and kept the tree in the heated cocoon at 45°F.  I saved the blooms even though it was cold enough to have killed them. But after this success, and a brief self pat on the back, a small voice said, "but is it worth it?"  Is keeping the tree warm when vulnerable, using electricity generated by fossil fuels, a sustainable practice? I don't think so.

I kinda hate the over-used, abused term sustainable. Sustainability is such a buzz word used to validate our products and activities; but what is the true definition of sustainability?

I did some more research. I learned with apple trees it takes 50 leaves to supply the energy required for a  piece of fruit. After counting the leaf buds on the peach tree I determined that the tree could possibly produce 6-8 peaches this first year.  I have two years and $50 invested in the tree. Now I have 1 KWH of electricity which at today's rates is about $.05 (plus another, $.05 for Xcel's "adjustments"). What happens when the tree quadruples in size? Do I provide a larger heated environment, and how does the cost break out? Is it still less of a carbon foot print and a lower per cost peach?

Perhaps it isn't about sustainable, it is about principle.

This year I am allowing myself the luxury of imposing upon nature to give me the possibility of producing some fruit. Bottom line, it still depends upon an inconceivable multitude of natural forces all smiling on my little tree.

Learning

Befuddled

From Teacher to Student to Student Teacher

I am presently acquiring new skills in the digital realm for my job at the University of Colorado Department of Art and Art History where I run the wood shop.  We now have a new piece of equipment, a CNC machine, which is basically a plotter with a 15 hp. wood cutting router at the business end rather than ink jets.  I am taking a Photoshop class at Red Rocks Community College and it has been a much broader education then I could have anticipated.

My educational roots are in photography having received a MFA degree back in 1985--which was during the pre-digital age. During this Photoshop class I have been fascinated by the interface in the program and how it simulates my experiences in printing color in a darkroom.  I find it interesting how the program not only works within the photographers matrix but also has a great deal of tooling for the ways of thinking and making you find within the discipline of graphics, painting, and drawing.

But the most profound influence on me has been becoming a student again and feeling that vulnerability and experiencing the frustrations which are integral to learning.  Perhaps part of my befuddlement is from  my working in, and teaching in, a four year university and taking a class at a two year college.  They have different missions and people they serve, with the two year school focusing on  job training and transfer students; and the university focus on research. I have truly learned the importance of both types of institutions and the needs they fulfill.

 I have learned how critical it is as an educator to be responsible to your students, reach out, be consistent.  In my newly forming opinion the relationship between student and teacher needs to move a bit away from master - apprentice  to collaborators to a shared enlightenment. The quality my of commitment to the students and their learning has greatly increased and in the end, they learn more and I have a fuller life.


The above image is my mid-term project for the Photoshop class which had to be a composite image about an emotion.

Unrelated Situation

 

From Not News to the New News

There was quite the excitement at Red Rocks Community College the other day while I was attending  my class on digital media.   Apparently some students in a chemistry lab mixed a couple of things and made a no-no which called for some evacuation of a section of the campus.

On my way out to my truck I took this shot as a passing thought, the thought being, "what if this image came in handy, if a real event took place I would have documentation."

Nothing really came of the 'miss mixture event',  and I forgot about it until I got this voice mail from Red Rocks Community College.  I realized how different my experience of the evacuation was from that of the droid voice I listened to telling me to ignore the smoking gun.

I decided to create a digital document from my  'moment captured'.   I have now published my take of this event on the social network, where it can become part of the information saturation form of pollution we seem to be drawn to.

This story can now become part of the - No News is the New News - phenomenon.

Winter Greens

From Wanting Fresh Greens to Using Words of Wisdom

“Can’t never could do nothing.”

I first heard these words from Tyler Roots as he bravely quoted his father’s words at his memorial service.

If you have the heart of an artist, then you must understand the contained lesson. My artist culture looks for the exceptions, not as rebellion but as exploration through expression. This creates comments and judgement by many as weird. But I find this way of being exciting a constant exploration. And it always ends for me in "Could be better" — that is my mantra.

As example, my new work as an artist is in horticulture, and the ‘can’t’ in Colorado’s Zone 5 climate is growing green produce, during the winter months from November to May, without investing a great deal of resources in hydrocarbons.

You ‘can’t’ do that — it gets too cold, and you get too short of days.

Well I can’t change the duration of daylight, but I thought perhaps there is something to be done in passive solar to up the temperature and prevent frozen crop.

Now I just want to come right out and say that I didn’t pull this off without using some fossil fuel. I used plastic products such as PVC, and 4 ply poly. But the PVC will last a lot of seasons and the poly was left over scrap from other projects. 

On the web I learned of the work of Eliot Coleman who wrote, The Winter Harvest Book about growing veggies year round.

So this is my first effort at extending season, and as my neighbor Michael pointed out—it’s only seed, what’s to lose? Hell, worse case scenario is I create lettuce popsicle and I learn something.

So I did some research. I chose to grow a cold crop such as lettuce that can thrive during shorter days and cooler temperatures, FYI, I also had a lot of harvested seed to play with. I knew better than to grow a Mediterranean culture such as tomatoes because that lose vitality at about 45 F degrees.

PVC 1/2 pipe just stuck in the ground about 6" each end covered with 4 mil poly with the perimeter held down with scrap

Then I covered the ground with frost row cover fabric, this photo taken in November
 

Well it seems to be working, I wouldn't want to have to try and feed my family year around with this new technology of mine, but I wouldn't say I couldn't.