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SOMETIMES IN MIDDLE AGE, people pick up strange new hobbies — salsa dancing, wine-tasting, or maybe bonsai. My handy wasband has taken it into his head to make rustic garden furnishings from fallen cedar trees he finds in the woods of upstate New York.
First was an arbor inspired by those at Poet’s Walk, a riverside park in Rhinebeck, N.Y., built with the help of our daughter Zoë.
His second project was the beautiful bench, top, of which I am the grateful recipient. He delivered it this weekend and it already looks at home under the cherry tree in my East Hampton backyard.
I asked Jeff how he figured out how to do it [see below for how-to]. He said he found some information online and consulted with our equally handy son, Max, a woodworker. There are no nails or screws involved — it’s all mortise and tenon (pegs and holes). He creates the design as he goes along, based on what the wood suggests. I love the back of my bench, which reminds me of the veins of a leaf.
Cedar mellows beautifully and can be left outdoors in all climates. The wood for this bench came from a building site in Upper Red Hook, N.Y. Jeff noticed some lots that had been partially cleared and were for sale; there were a lot of fallen cedar trees on the property. He tracked down the owner and explained about his new hobby, and asked whether he could remove those trees. She laughed and told him to go right ahead.
HOW TO BUILD A RUSTIC BENCH
For each (male) piece, measure the length of log needed and then add 1-1/2″ to each end. Using a saw, scribe a circle 1-1/2″ from each end, cutting into the log to the depth of the tenon (peg) you are making. With a chisel, carve out the tenon. Then, with a drill, cut a mortise (hole) in the adjoining piece. Fill the hole with glue, then push and hammer the piece with the tenon into the glue-filled joint.
To make the join even more secure, drill a perpendicular hole into the female piece and through the tenon. Then fill the hole with glue and hammer in a dowel.
The decorative pieces on the back and the angled pieces are joined with dowels to the frame.
The seat, which is locust (the farmers up here used locust for fence posts–it’s said to last 150 years without treating) is also joined to the frame with dowels.
The only difficulty is getting a right angle. Cedar logs are rarely straight, so you may have to cheat, correct and re-jigger the frame to allow for the funky dimensions of the logs.
MAYBE SOME OF YOU HAVE NOTICED I’ve reduced my blogging schedule from daily (as if that was ever gonna be sustainable) to a few times a week. I’ve been occupied with such matters as:
- cleaning out my basement (still)
- painting a green rattan sofa white (Why does everything worth doing, like painting a rattan sofa, turn out to be either harder than it looks or more time-consuming than you think it’s going to be?)
- mulling over what to edge my driveway with — logs, railroad ties, steel, cobblestones, nothing — when I get around to having a driveway built
- considering what kind of material to use for a patio (flagstone, wood decking) when I get around to having a patio built
- paying bills that built up over two months of vacancy in Cobble Hill
- having house guests — better enjoy them now, I figure, they’re not going to come in January
- going to the beach:-)
I’m feeling very indecisive lately regarding my landscaping choices. Everyone who visits has different opinions. For instance, the old, misshapen, non-flowering cherry tree in the middle of the backyard. One friend says lose it. Another says prune it. A third says keep it. I say…I don’t know.
The roses of Sharon are blooming, weakly. They’re weed trees, essentially. I never knew how easily they sprout and how invasive they can be. The forsythia’s out of control too, to name another plant I always throught was ‘desirable,’ and took great pains to nurture along. Oh, and the wisteria’s back. It’s like something out of Sorcerer’s Apprentice, popping up again everywhere. A force of nature, like the ocean.
It’s August. Time to do nothing, I tell myself. Just to bide my time, until the landscapers’ calendars slow down and their prices get (hopefully) more reasonable. And I’ve made some decisions.
Deer count, last 24 hours: 4
This post is adapted from an article I wrote that appears in the current issue of Garden Design magazine. These are my own scouting shots, taken a year ago this month.
THE VIEW FROM THIS 4,000 SQUARE FOOT ROOFTOP TERRACE in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is a triple whammy, with the East River, the Manhattan skyline, and the monumental latticework of the Williamsburg Bridge all seen in close-up. It cried out for equally spectacular landscaping.
The client, who is in real estate, hired celebrity garden designer Rebecca Cole to turn the vast, 11th floor terrace into something two people could enjoy without feeling lost in space. Cole, a well-known TV personality and author, imagined the space as a sort of urban woodland, where you can “literally wander as you would through the woods, taking different paths around birches and evergreens, coming upon places to sit, noticing pretty little ground cover flowers.”
It does indeed feel like a natural landscape, which Cole designed by using the existing 24-inch-square concrete pavers almost like graph paper. She started with the trees (clump birch and red maple are the mainstays), “putting them in spaces that feel like they’re making winding paths. Then I figured out how many containers should surround them.”
Cube-shaped metal planters mimic the grids of steel across the river. They’re filled with tough country-style perennials like rudbeckia, echinacea, Russian sage, coreopsis, spirea, nepeta, and salvia. Sun-loving and drought-tolerant, they are surprisingly happy on an exposed urban roof.
The client wanted a water feature, but because of the windy conditions, a fountain was out. So Cole came up with an architectural solution, simple and geometric – little ‘infinity pools,’ flush with the ground. Here, too, the experience resembles a walk in the woods, where streams pop up every once in a while.
Half a dozen shallow rubber trays, pre-planted with sedums in mixed shapes and colors, form patterned ‘carpets,’ positioned for all-season viewing from the loft’s floor-to-ceiling windows.
HAS ANYONE ELSE NOTICED the proliferation of storefront fortune-tellers in downtown Brooklyn? They’re popping up like the acupuncturists and qi gong studios of a few years ago (that seem to have stayed in business, mysteriously). On every other street, it seems, there are neon signs reading “CRYSTAL ENERGY” in 2nd story windows and buildings in unlikely locations emblazoned “PSYCHIC” in huge red letters.
Naturally this has aroused my curiosity. First, how do they pay the rent? Fortunes at $5 a pop take a long time to add up. What kind of scam are they? Money-laundering operations of some sort? Does anyone seriously patronize these places for “answers to all questions on Advice, Love, Money, and More!”? Are they a sign of recession desperation, perhaps?
Second, are they pure, utter bullshit, or might there possibly be something to it? I’m not a hard-core skeptic in these matters. For a while in the ’80s, I was a frequent client of Pia’s, a skilled (so I thought) tarot card reader at the Gypsy Tea Kettle near Bloomingdale’s, whose readings seemed deeply insightful at the time.
So the other night around 8PM, when I was in Brooklyn to meet and greet my new Cobble Hill tenants, I knocked on the door of one of these storefronts — the one at 60 Fourth Avenue, near Dean Street in Boerum Hill (above).
Ann looked the part, in a house dress with hair flying. Her red-painted anteroom is three feet wide; through a door, I could see small children running around in a room with a TV. She seemed surprised to have a customer. I was determined to give her nothing to go on beyond my first name and date of birth, which she requested. I didn’t ask any questions, just to tell me what she ‘saw.’
She gave me a penetrating stare. No cards, no crystals. For $5, she said, she would tell me two things about myself. As it turned out, I got three, and the news wasn’t good:
- My energy, she said, was weak. True, I was kind of wiped after three days of running around the city. Also, it was a hot, humid night, and my eye makeup had smudged.
- Regarding my ‘direction in life’ (her words), Ann told me I was taking “two steps forward, three steps back.”
- My “‘sharkras’ are disconnected.” Which ones? I wanted to know. “Could be any of them,” Ann replied.
In order to find out more, she said, she’d have to “do some research.” That would cost $75. I declined to pursue it. It was all very soft-sell. She seemed to want to get back to her grandchildren. I asked her where she was from. Romania, she said, “but I was born and raised here.” She didn’t have an accent.
I took a shower, got a good night’s rest, and am glad to report that Ann’s ‘reading’ was, indeed, utter bullshit. My energy is great, my chakras are humming, and for every three steps forward, I take only two back.
Atlantic Avenue near Bond
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