Projects Gone Wrong: Deck Stairs

"I kneeled and combed the grass, asking myself: Why do they not make orange nails?"

"I should be finished before the storm," I told Lisa. "It'll be a quick project."
It wasn't and yet that was not the problem. The problem was the project itself: stairs leading from my deck to my lawn. In the end, they were too steep and too shallow.
Walking down them, I had visions of my toddler missing a step and face-planting onto the lawn. I saw my mother-in-law holding my newborn son and as they took what should have been a casual few steps onto the soft green grass, she trips and ... You get it.
I needed to tear down the steps and start again. It hurt. With slumped shoulders I sulked back into the house and accepted defeat. Tomorrow I would go to The Home Depot.

In Search of  Lost Nails

The day had started bad. As I worked at prying an old nail from the deck, the nail snapped and shot into the grass. I knew time was of the essence. If you do not find a dropped nail within the first 10 seconds of dropping it, you never will. It's true.
Because my eyes had failed to track the nail's trajectory, I had no idea where it landed. My son walks this path everyday and he hates wearing shoes. The word tetanus flashed red in my brain. I needed to find the nail.
I kneeled and combed the grass with my fingers, asking myself: Why do they not make orange nails? (Do they?) When this initial slightly-panicked search failed, I stepped back, took a breath and decided to take a new approach.
I would mimic the way searches are conducted on cop shows. I set up my perimeter: five feet out and five feet across. Then I imagined a grid and began to longitudinally rake my fingertips across the ground. I scanned the invisible grid line by line, finding nothing, not even a bug or worm. Just grass. Just dirt. And a broken piece of plastic.
By now I was 10 minutes in and my eyes began to zoom out and the green grass began to swish together like in a Van Gogh painting. I forced my eyes to focus. Attend to the details. Notice the water-drop on the tip of a grass blade. Look closely.
I worked it latitudinal. And nothing.
I stood up . A bug net wrapped my head. Tiny gnats had been dive-bombing my eyeballs and, like a Venus flytrap, my lashes shut on them, one after another. After having washed a few out with my tears, I resorted to the bug-net. Sweat had soaked the screen, sticking it to my face as the gnats climbed up and down trying to get at my eyeballs. I squinted at the grass.
"Shit."
I tried looking over the whole area in one long sweep, hoping to see a flicker of silver in the green; then I could move on and start the stairs.
Nothing.
My son would have to wear shoes indefinitely.

A Stairway to Nowhere

Slightly baffled and very sweaty, I soldier on.

I should have known that the steps would not be deep enough. When I pulled off the old steps, I noticed whoever built it had used a wider board than I had. Yet, I didn't want to buy new wood. I had a bunch in my woodpile. I soldiered on.
And you know how the story ends.
I don't want to suffer you with some cliche lesson I learned. There's a few in there and if you know what they are, please post.
I have yet to tear down the stairs and I have not found the nail.
So it goes.

Postscript: My son--who's a toddler--took the above photo. I'm impressed.

From Your Backyard (or Market) to Mine: Kale Ideas?

Every so often, Backyard Diaries will ask readers to post ideas on a single ingredient. Type some of yours in the comment box. After a couple of weeks, I'll compile them into a post for everyone to use.

From the Woodpile: A Rustic Bench (Or Table)

My carpentry work starts at the wood pile, a jumble of discarded timber hidden behind some wild forsythia: old skids, two-by-fours, corner posts, two-by-sixes; deck walls, with planks still nailed in place, the top of a tree house, an old birdhouse screwed onto a rotted post.
Sometimes I sit and stare at the mess, thinking what can the wood make? A seesaw for my son, a new compost bin, an arbor for grapes.
I suggest everyone who has the space start their own woodpile, just begin by picking up discarded wood from the side of the road. Never pass by a two-by-four, a four-by-four or a two-by-six; with these you can build just about anything you'll need in your backyard.
Also, grab all the skids (pallets) you can. Factories dump these on the side of the road, free for the taking. You can make all sorts of birdhouses (and other cool things) from these. (An upcoming post will show how.)
Today, however, I'm building a bench or, if you like, a table.
The wood pile, though, did not inspire this project. I was in a new cafe bakery that recently opened in Easthampton, sitting at a table and admiring the table's simple structure, when I noticed just how simple it was. I can build this!
I drove home, headed back to the wood pile, and I had all the wood I needed: two two-by-sixes for the top; four two-by-fours for the sides; four four-by-fours for the the legs.

Directions

Building the structure

1. Place the two two-by-sixes side by side and decide on the length you want your table to be. Cut both pieces to the desired length. These will become the top of the table.
2. Once cut, place the top (the two-by-sixes) on a flat surface so that the top is face down. Take your two-by-fours and place one on the length side of the top of the table. Mark the proper length for each side.
3. Cut two by fours to the proper length.
4. Do the same for the width. Once finished, you'll have two two-by-fours cut for length and two cut for width. These will box in the top of the table.
3. Pre-drill some holes so you can screw the sides to the top. Screw the sides in using 3-inch long deck screws.

4. Once this is finished, you can flip over your table. You'll see that the top is cleanly framed by the two-by fours.
5. Cut the four-by-four legs. I cut them so the structure could be a table or bench. You can decide.
6. Once the legs are cut. place them in the four corners of the bottom of the table.
7. Again, pre-drill holes in the two-by-four sides and into the posts. I found I needed to place four screws (each in one corner) through the two-by-four sides and into the posts, equaling eight screws in each corner. That held legs tight.

8. Once your legs are screwed in you're done with the structure.

Stain

The most important part of this project (other than making sure your bench will not fall over) is selecting the proper stain. Pick a color you want. This will really finish the project. Also, buy some polyurethane; this chemical will seal the stain once it drys, keeping moisture and rot out of the wood. You will not need much, so get the smallest and most affordable containers of stain and polyurethane. Also, buy some course and fine sandpaper. 

1. Sand wood. If you are like me and using old discarded wood, you will need to take some time smoothing out the imperfections. It is not too hard. I just take my time, moving slowly, and it gets done with a little effort. Have some water available to hydrate if you're working in the sun.

2. I sand with course and then fine, getting the wood really smooth. When you sand, make sure to go with the grain. For the particulars on sanding, check this out .

3. Once sanded,  clean off any dust and then apply stain. You can use a rag to do this. Just rub the stain right in, again going with the grain. Let it dry for about 15 minutes, and then coat again. Keep doing this until you get the shade you want.
4. Last, place on your sealant, the polyurethane. Place one coat, let dry for a few hours, lightly sand, and then place a second coat. You can repeat this a few times. I, however, only placed one coat. When you're using wood you did not pay for, you tend to be more relaxed with these things.

And there it is, your bench (or table):

Kale Chips, Day Lily Tempura, Pea and Swiss Chard Timbale

I had turned my car around, but not for the wild day lilies. Instead, a beach chair caught my attention; mine had ripped. Yet, when the chair had no "free" sign on it, I decided to walk a little farther to a patch of woods where I had noticed some common day lily buds poking out from tall grass along the road's edge. I plucked a handful and headed home. I was feeling confident, having already cooked kale chips for my son and his two friends earlier in the day-- and they loved them. The approval of a three-year-old is better than the approval of any food critic. With that encouragement, I decided to further my culinary adventure and cook day lily tempura with pea and Swiss chard timbale.
Sounds fancy, but it's not. Here are the recipes:


Kale Chips 

1. Cut the leaves from the stems of the kale. I love kale stems, but in chips they're too chewy.
2. Chop the leaves into chip-sized pieces.
3. I like to get the oven pretty hot, at 425 degrees. Preheat.
4. Spread chips on cookie sheets; you'll most likely need more than one. I usually cook a few batches.
5. Drizzle some oil over them. I use Canola.
6. Cook until the edges of the kale brown.
7. Sprinkle some salt over the top, mix them up a bit, and serve.

Day Lily Tempura

These are common day lilies. I usually see these growing along the sides of roads. Pick a few buds, before they blossom.

1. Make an egg batter. I season mine with a little Parmesan cheese and pepper.
2. Put some flour in a bowl, mixing in dried oregano.
3. Dip the lilies in eggs and then flour and fry.
5. Once they're golden brown, take them out and pat them down with some paper towels.
6. I sprinkle them with a little salt and drizzle a little lemon juice on top.

Pea and Swiss chard timbale
A timbale is a dish made in a mold. We'll make a breadcrumb mold for this dish.

1. I used sugar snap peas, and just chopped them up.
2. Chop up the chard. Use the stems, too.

3. Saute the stems first in a little hot oil, a tablespoon or so. They'll need a little more time to soften. You can saute them with a little garlic or onion if you like.
4. Drop in the peas, and saute for a few minutes.
5. Last drop in the chard leaves, cover the top and place the burner on medium. Let the chard cook down to about half its original size.

7. While that cooks down, butter the bottom and sides of a somewhat deep loaf pan. Cover the butter with breadcrumbs. I buy the seasoned type. If your breadcrumbs are not , mix in some dried oregano, basil, and whatever else you like. Experiment.
8. The pan should be coated with breadcrumbs; this will become your mold.
9. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, crack two eggs and a mix of herbs, finely chopped. I picked basil, oregano, mint, chives, some herb whose name I do not know (it's really peppery), and some garlic leaves. Mix this up with eggs.

10. Drain excess water out of the peas and chard and then drop them into the herb mixture.
11. Last, drop everything over the breadcrumbs in the loaf pan. I like to sprinkle a little Parmesan cheese over the top.
12. Cook for about an hour. Once done, flip the loaf onto a plate, praying the mold holds. (I'm serious; the prayer part is vital here.)

Here's the final dish. It doesn't look pretty, but it tasted damn good.

Pea and Swiss chard timbale with lily tempura. 

Hiding in Plain Sight: Little Green Visitors Arrive

I had planned to yank them all from the dirt and toss them into the compost pile. They looked like clover. Delicate little greens with a yellow bud readying to bloom. To me, they were weeds.

Luckily, the 90-degree high-humidity weather kept me from doing yard work and the weeds remained rooted.

The following day I took a walk with naturalist John Root in some woods behind his home. Root stopped every few feet to point out wild edibles (stinging nettle, violet, black raspberry, amaranth, lambs quarters, purslane), but it was the plant he picked almost as an aside that caught my attention.

"Here," he said, bending down near a compost pile along a trail. "It looks like a clover, but it's wood sorrel."

I looked in his hand and saw the "weeds." I picked one and the taste was a shot of lemon. When I returned home, I picked a handful and shared it with my family. I was thrilled.

Then I decided to walk through my yard to note what other wild edibles were growing just outside the front door. The first one I found was lambs quarters, just a few sprouting from un-weeded spots in the garden. This green is succulent and crisp and as nutritious as spinach.

I also had a small patch of plantain growing in my lawn, their tiny green leaves continuously re-growing after I mow the lawn. You can use these in a stirfry.

Then, the final gift was a wild black raspberry. I'm not sure where they came from, but there they were, twisting their thorny vines up the chicken wire fence of my garden. I grabbed a few and headed back inside for a taste.

Of course, these green (and black) visitors were always there. The only difference is now I can see them. I wonder what I else is hiding in plain sight.

Rabbit Battles: Know Thy Enemy

"To know your enemy, you must become your enemy," Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

To understand my enemy, I first must consider some facts on the ravenous beast, this eastern cottontail, the ravisher of my garden's green beans, a mischievous little bunny hiding behind a cloak of cuteness. The cottontail was once considered no more than a rat, lumped into the same family as rodents. (Peter G. Mirick, MassWildlife) In 1912, they were "emancipated," as Mirick says, and placed in a diverse family of "exceptionally cute furballs"  in the Order Lagomorpha.

Just like in the Disney movie, these lagamorphas thump their feet when threatened. They're also lightning quick, hopping at speeds up to 18 mph. They can move their ears nearly 360 degrees, picking up the slightest of sounds in all directions, and these large erect ears also cool their bodies when they overheat. Their big brown eyes see in many directions at once, except straight ahead.

A formidable opponent. 

Rabbits live in silence, except when trapped, when they make "a surprisingly loud squeal full of heart-rending terror." (Mirick) To avoid such a fate, they (except the eastern cottontail variety it seems) spend most of the daytime huddled away hiding, sneaking out at night to feast on anything green, from stem to flower, clover to dandelion, and most anything in a garden. In turn, almost every predator has a sweet-tooth for rabbit, including "man, dog, foxes, coyote, bobcats, cats, weasels, raccoons, mink, great horned owls, barred owls, large hawks, crows, and snakes." (Wild Animals of New England)

 It's hard not to pity this pursued little creature, let alone hate them, but I must try.

The are not all cuteness. First, they eat their own poop. They practice what is called refection, which simply means they re-ingest "their soft, moist fecal pellets" (Wild Animals of New England). They suck this nutrient-rich mush from the small intestines, sending those hard, tiny pellets down the large intestines and out of the anus.

Not so cute anymore, huh? It gets worse.

At any given time, they are infested with "fleas, lice, ticks, cestodes (tapeworms), trematodes (roundworms), maggots of the gray fleshfly and larvae of the botfly ." (Wild Animals of New England) And, these shit-eating, bug-infested bunnies, in particular the eastern cottontail, have pushed our native rabbit, the New England cottontail, to near extinction. As the landscape changes and becomes more suburban, the shy, reclusive New England cottontail has found itself homeless, living on the edge of dwindling rural areas, while the more urban (arrogant?) eastern cottontails thrive.

I have stood there watching an eastern cottontail sprawled out and watching me as I hoed weeds in my garden, unafraid and seemingly waiting for me to leave my vegetables unprotected. The New England cottontail would have zigzagged for the woods at first sight of me.

Eastern cottontails, cocky little bastards.

Now that I have the facts, next I will watch them, noting their ways, their movements. As Sun Tzu said, I will become my enemy.

Beware, little bunny. Beware.

Rabbit Battles: Fence in your beans!

I wish someone had told me this, but I had to learn the hard way, when a rabbit nibbled the leaves clear off of several plants, leaving naked stems. I had planted pole beans throughout my yard, front and back, with dreams of an abundant harvest. A rabbit, of course, had its own dreams. The best laid plans, right. I did salvage a few, shoveling them up and transplanting them to a spot behind a fenced-in area of the garden.

Also, for some reason, the rabbit missed several beans I had planted in front of my house's chimney. I planted them there because the spot received little sun, and I figured the heat from the brick chimney would keep the soil and beans warm enough. This seems to have worked as they're growing well, their vines tangled up and through some old wood lattice I propped up there.

Out front, I had planted a row of bush beans where my yard meets the pavement, and it seemed like the rabbit missed these, too, until I woke one morning to find bare green stems poking from the dirt. Damn! I swear at this point I felt like Elmer Fudd, stalking around my yard with a rock in hand, waiting for the little cotton tail to show itself. I dug up the bush beans that had a few remaining leaves and transplanted them to a fenced-in spot I quickly made. I used some chicken wire and PVC pipes to erect the fence. They're now filling in nicely, safe behind hardware cloth.

Today (July 3, 2014) all my beans are clustered behind fences with fat green leaves, safe from the rabbit's teeth. "Good fences make good neighbors," I think, but soon hear the rabbits reply: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." And, I see him there in the early morning, just before sunrise, pacing before the fence, trying to find a way in.

Not this time, Mr. Rabbit. Not this time.