The Home Crowd

Duck Hunt, the leading sign that your lawn has gotten beyond your control…

With memorial day come and gone, the prime season for lawn pride is in full swing.  The topic came about recently regarding the patterns that professional greenskeepers create on professional baseball fields.  How did they do it?  Did they lay down different types of grass in patterns that would grow in differing shades of green?  Perhaps some do, but the process of striping lawns is usually much more simple.

• A heavy roller is just attached to the lawnmower.
• As the grass is cut, the roller ‘bends’ the blades of grass in the direction of the mowing path
• Alternate mowing path against the previous path, and voila!

The above image was found at the website of the manufacturer of the Lawn Stryper, found here -  patternyourlawn.com

Of course, there’s other DIY alternatives to be found on instructables.com, as well as other roller-type striping attachments available, but for the price, I think I’ll just order the Lawn Stryper attachment from Amazon or Overstock, seems that it can be found in the mid-5o dollar range.

A cheaper alternative, given enough space would be to drive your car across the lawn a few times, your mileage will (literally) vary on this one.

Cheaper alternative yet?  Do like this lawn stylist…

Spotted at Jalopnik,

How sweet is this?  A stock car, go-kart race track right in your front yard!

Looks like they live out in the middle of nowhere, which is exactly the location of “making your own fun”

But…why?

• When pouring the driveway, purchased far too much concrete..
• Knew your riding mower was fast, but without lap times, who’d believe ya?
• Proving ground that your guests actually are too intoxicated to drive after late night parties.

Or, perhaps, just a big fan of racing.  Just goes to show that if you have a big enough property, and the determination, you too can have your own race track.  However, if you plan on racing heavy machinery, you may want to bank the corners somewhat, or suffer the consequences.

More pics at Jalopnik – Link

HomeAid is a leading national non-profit provider of housing for today’s homeless. The organization builds and renovates multi-unit homes for America’s temporarily homeless while they rebuild their lives.

Annually, the fundraiser known as “Project Playhouse” benefits HomeAid Orange County (CA) comes together in the open air of fashion island and culminates in the auction of the playhouses at the conclusion of their exhibition.  And these aren’t your run-of-the-mill dolled up sheds you might be imagining…

Hampton Harmony (above) by Shea Homes was featured at last year’s event.  The assortment of playhouses are typically funded by homebuilders and product vendors.  Volunteer firms also provide architectural, interior design, and landscape design services, as well as countless hours volunteered towards the labor of creating these miniature McMansions.

High design? For a playhouse you say?  You may swap out with the kids after you see how well these pads are outfitted.  It’s not unusual to see playhouses very fine interior spaces, decked out with granite countertops and plasma televisions.  And they won’t take up much of your backyard space as each playhouse is designed to fit in a 10′X10′ space.  However, if you’re planning on diving into this mini-housing auction, make sure to bring your checkbook as many playhouses of years past have gone for upwards of $50,000.  Still not a bad deal considering the cost of housing per square foot.

The Sketch Pad (above) by William Lyon homes was also featured at 2007′s Project playhouse event.

The playhouse village will be on display near the Atrium Lawn at Fashion Island in Newport Beach, California from September 6 to October 11, 2008. Visitors have an opportunity to view the pint-size creations on display by purchasing a ticket at the playhouse village. While at the village, visitors can purchase tickets to enter an opportunity drawing to win one of the playhouses on display (all remaining playhouses will be available for auction on October 11, 2008). Funds raised, including raffle and auction proceeds, support HomeAid Orange County’s mission of building dignified housing where homeless families and individuals can rebuild their lives.

The opening day, September 6th, however, is the best chance to get a good peek inside the playhouse village.  For a donation of $20, you can tour all the playhouses, inside and out.  This is a great deal, due to the playhouses shutting their doors for the remainder of the exhibition.  You can still tour the playhouse village for a $5 donation, but the only way of seeing inside is through their teeny teeny windows.  Be sure to check this event out if you’re in the area.  All the money raised goes to a great cause, and if you enter the raffle, you may just end up winning one of these playhouses.  Which will likely only be expensive as you dress up your actual home in order to not be shown up by the kid’s playhouse in the backyard.

Link to HomeAid

Link to Project Playhouse

And who’s showing more patriotism than this guy!  According to NBC San Diego, Eastlake resident Steve Pfeiffer, who works for the Navy, has 762 flags in the front yard, and another 270 in the Backyard.  Wow!

Not to be un-patriotic at all, but if this were also a ‘Where’s Waldo’ scene, I’d never spot the little guy in his red and white striped shirt.  -  Link to slideshow

Happy 4th of July!  And join me in praying that fireworks tonight won’t set fire to any more of California…

A Journalist for The Mirror UK, Julie McCaffrey recently spent some time with fellow Brit Richard Reynolds, the alpha guerrilla gardener, and owner of the website guerrillagardening.org.  Sneaking around under the cover of night, Reynolds shirks the laws and regulations regarding cultivating public lands.  And he’s not alone, since 2004, he’s collected more than 4000 members to his beautification movement.

But…why?

From The Mirror UK,

Four years ago, after moving from Devon to the concrete carbuncle of Elephant and Castle, Richard grew tired of seeing the raised flower-bed at his front door neglected and overgrown.

“I love gardening,” he explains. “I missed it since I moved to London and decided I couldn’t wait for the council. So I got off my a**e, dug up the flowerbed myself and planted cuttings my mum gave me.”

A dark corner that used to reek of urine now ripples with a variety of different colours and wafts with the sweet smell of lavender and sage.

The story goes on further to highlight frequent times that Reynolds and his crew almost get arrested, yet usually let off with a warning.  After all, who wants to be the cop that ensures public safety and welfare by getting a gardener off the streets, keeping the world safe, one rogue gardener at a time.  The neighbors are happy about the volunteer work being put into the neighborhood, and it gives a group of people a sense of accomplishment.  The only downside however is the law.  Cultivating public lands doesn’t seem so bad until you consider that, if not maintained, some of these pet projects may wither and die, leaving a weed-infested mess, and your local municipality on the hook to re-plant.  Or, perhaps, on a more ridiculous scale, how about a nice field of corn in the middle of your favorite park.  Everyone loves corn right?

So I was relieved to see this picture on Reynolds’ site, highlighting an improvement over the course of 2 years.

Only question I have is, what is a 30 year old man doing out at all hours of the night gardening?  Shouldn’t he be at the local pub?  And what fuels his jolly band of volunteers to get their hands in the dirt in pitch darkness?  My guess would be meth.

I doubt this’ll catch on here in the states though, and here’s why…

• Anyone referring to themselves as a “Guerrilla” with 4000 followers breaking the law under the cover of night would possibly find themselves tending to the gardens of guantanamo bay.

• Immigrants.  Right now they have the landscaping market cornered as a low-paying job that most of us don’t want.  But if you’re out there, doing it for free, for your own self-gratification, and in the cool night air instead of the scorching heat of summer…. you may spend the rest of your days ever suspicious that there’s a thirty year old pickup truck laden with rakes in your rear view mirror.