Dining Alfresco

We are fans of mild summer days, long hours of sunlight, good food, friends and enjoying dinner outside.

Trash Can Repair

When we bought our stainless steel CanWorks trash can we did it because we felt that this would be the last trash can we would ever buy. It won't rust, won't crack, it's almost all metal so it is recyclable... almost all metal. The one part of the can that gets actual wear, however, turned out to be plastic. The hinge piece between the vertical rod and the rod that connects to the foot pedal broke after about 2 years. I refuse to either throw the can away or buy anything else from CanWorks as a result.

Instead I made the replacement hinge pictured above from some scrap galvanized sheet metal brackets and a bent finishing nail. I used tin snips to cut the pieces out and pliers and a hammer to bend the flaps around the rods. It didn't hold well so I used duct tape to try to keep it in place. The tape lost it's stick a couple of weeks ago. That's when I remembered the portable butane soldering iron my father-in-law gave me as a gift.

I heated up the rod and the bracket and fed as much solder in as I could.

Voila! Better than new. Sure, its ramshackle but it's solid. Until it needs another patch it's our small triumph over planned obsolescence.

Back in action.

Rebar Bean Poles

Ever since reading The Year I Ate My Yard by Tony Kienitz, I have wanted to experiment with using rebar in the garden. I like that it is an unromantic material which can actually be unexpectedly beautiful as it ages from new iron to a dark rusty brown. We have also discovered that it can easily become a whimsical yet still practical addition.


"Three-eighths rebar can be curled and coiled, bent and boxed in just about any direction and it can be done by hand...

...Rebar gives the garden a sense of age, of decay, and ruin, but ironically, it is sturdier and easier to negotiate than bamboo stakes, redwood or any of the other manufactured verticality offered."

Tony Kienitz - The year I ate my yard

We decided to try it out on two wine barrel green bean plantings. The concept was to create a vine or tendril-like top to the typical teepee shaped bean support. The supports were fun to make. We'll see how they look once the vines have climbed to the tops.

Mark Frauenfelders Chicken Coop project

Mark posted about his chicken coop project on Dinosaurs and Robots. We can't wait to see how it goes. link

Graywater -Ramshackle style

Here at Camp Ramshackle everyone enjoys an outdoors bath. These two lizards come down from their nearby olive tree to get their fill nearly every time now. While we would love to install a full fledged graywater system, we are not there yet. In the meantime we do the best we can with what we've got. The outdoor baths coincide conveniently with the dry season so that the plants near our house rarely get anything other than recycled water.

Iron Bed and Lamp

Julia snapped this shot of our bed and lamp. The bed is a simple vintage iron frame from around the turn of the century. We like the no frills style but maybe more than that we like that it is made from simple, honest, durable materials. With a coat of wax applied every decade or two, this bed frame will likely last many more centuries.

Radio Flyer Roadside Score

The ubiquitous red Radio Flyer wagon is now part of the Ramshackle fleet. Cobwebs included! The flyer was found with a big "FREE" sign on it on the streets of Sierra Madre. I especially love the graphic of the downhill racer. I'm sure my young children will figure that out all too soon.


Note to self: register for first aid course.

Blooming Bush Anemone

Bush anemone, Carpenteria californica, in bloom at the Ramshackle compound.

About This Time Last Year

We rolled out the canvas tent to prepare for a Mother's Day brunch at our house. Our eldest did his share of work.



The tent was later to be moved to a platform about 20 feet from this location. But the move was delayed until the squatters fledged.

Slow Events of the Day

Household chores have gotten easier thanks to my eldest son's efforts to do his own laundry. "Mom I just washed my pajamas," he said as he dropped the dripping wet pants into the dirt.

"That's great. Is there a good place to hang them to dry?" I asked.

The balance beam proved the best solution for the day.


Then a little time spent enjoying the California poppies.

And time to give the pozo blue sage a sip of water. The olive blossoms volunteered to swim.


The youngest works hard to pull himself up. Not quite there. Soon.

The Real Treasure of Sierra Madre--Neil the Pig

Neil has been around for at least a decade, although I was only introduced to him over a year ago. And what a fine friend he has become to my sons and me. He lives in the city of Sierra Madre, California, a tony foothill village community. He splits the yard with a few dogs and a kid's swing set.

My sons and I went to visit him about a month back only to find an empty yard. My heart sank with fear Neil had gone down the path that leads to bacon. To my delight, we returned to find our porcine friend fit and well. Neighbors and friends are welcome to feed him. However, the owners request that you only feed Neil lettuce or rice cakes. He's on a diet.

Where to start?

You have to start somewhere, so the beginning is as good a place as any.

Sometime about May, 2002 my wife Julia and I, for the 10th time, placed a bid on a house we hoped to buy. This was the last chance, the wedding was approaching and we had decided that we could no longer handle the stress of signing an over-asking-price offer on the trunk of our realtor's car moments after having walked through a house for the first time.

This time was different. We were on a routine MLS drive-by when we called our realtor from the chain link fence in front of lucky number 10 without having been inside. "We want to make an offer on a house." The offer was exactly the asking price this time. There were no competing bids where previously there had been up to 20 or more and there was a certain sense of resolve: either we would get the house or we wouldn't. The one thing that was certain was that we would no longer be in the market for a house.



To try to make the start of a long story short, we got the house - 1000 square feet of ramshackle loveliness set on 23,000 square feet of a former olive orchard, moderately sloped and slightly terraced with a view to the six or so mile distant downtown Los Angeles skyline.

We have been slowly working to transform the property and our lifestyle into something that makes sense for us. We hope to document that transformation and it's lessons through this blog. We hope to connect with others who share some of our interests (urban homesteading, organic gardening, native plants) and values (DIY, creativity, simplicity) exchange ideas, and, if all goes well, find a sense of community.