Wednesday, July 28, 2010

My Urban Farmhouse as an ongoing live-in art project





Since this is my last house I years ago pulled out the stops and have been having a blast tripping out the interior since I hope to live here until I am 94. VERY freeing indeed! And fun as all get-out. I work almost exclusively with scavenged materials, with wonderful finds (like big sheets of mirror for my livingroom floor) being catalysts for new phases of perennial projects. If you'd like to see a video of my Incredibly Red Hall, check out:


See that link at the bottom of each page at the urban farm blog for an eclectic mix of posts about science, art, political rants, wonderful music videos, poetry, cars, space travel and astronomy, dinosaurs, cool airplanes, my own art projects and more....there is so much to be interested in and excited by during our brief time here.

I love cultivating gardens around my house, then cultivating new possibilities based on recycling discards inside it. I THINK that at any of my blogs if you click "subscribe by e-mail" you get an e-mail each time I make a new post...the system won't let me try it on myself.

A nice rain here in south Tampa this afternoon as I worked out at the Joe Abrahams Fitness Center at Ballast Point, then more once I got home. Perfect timing, as earlier I had set out in my northeast street bed young plants of African Foxglove and Yellow Turnera and Pink Ruellia, watered in initially with water from a front porch rain barrel. After the storms passed I gave papaya seedlings in my beds nice drenches of kitchen graywater from my 5 gallon buckets.
John

2 comments:

  1. Can you talk more about the papaya thing and how to grow them? I went way back in your blog and couldn't find much. Since I'm in Spring Hill, I'm wondering when and if I can plant them here. It was sooooooooo cold last winter, and I'm worried even about the kiwi plants I planted this year. Would papaya make it through a winter here?

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  2. Papayas are very easy from seeds taken from a ripe fruit, sown directly into potting soil or compost...they will pop up in 2 weeks or so, and here in south Tampa, can be bearing fruit within 6 months since they are not a tree but an herbaceous plant. Up there you might want to grow them in 20 gallon pots you could move into your garage when a freeze threatens as they are very tropica. I lost ALL of mine to the 2 nights of 27 degrees we had here. But I am setting out seedlings all the time and already have one 5 feet tall! I thought I had covered papayas a while back here. John

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