Tag Archives: garden

May 27, 2008 · 10:55 am

Caboose Stained Glass, Bookcases

The Memorial Day long weekend was a very busy time for WP668, our backyard caboose. Now that the rough electrical inspection has been passed, on Saturday, we finally filled in the trench running through the ballast under WP668. Vince Taylor delivered and installed our new stained glass bay window, and the three big red bookcases were delivered by Crate and Barrel. We were getting ready for Sunday when we served a brunch to the winners from the SAMA Auction. We did not get everything done but the caboose looks great and our guests said they had a wonderful time.

It was a delight to see the lovely windows Vince created. You can see his initial drawings and art glass samples on my

11 Feb 2008 blog entry. Here are some photos from Saturday:

John finishing exterior wiring

Open electrical trench WP668 caboose photo: copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson

Filled in electrical trench WP668 caboose photo: copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson

Vince and John prepare bay window

first stained glass panel going in bay WP668 caboose photo: copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson

Train silhouette detail stained glass WP668 caboose photo: copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson

Lizard silhouette detail stained glass WP668 caboose photo: copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson

Vince Taylor in window WP668 caboose photo: copyright 2008 John Plocher

Vince Taylor and John installing window WP668 caboose photo: copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson

Vince Taylor starting on 2nd stained glass window WP668 caboose photo: copyright 2008 John Plocher

Two windows done WP668 caboose photo: copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson

3rd window ready to go WP668 caboose photo: copyright 2008 John Plocher

Three windows done WP668 caboose photo: copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson

Delivery truck WP668 caboose photo: copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson

1st bookcase arriving WP668 caboose photo: copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson

3rd bookcase going in WP668 caboose photo: copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson

Glass and bookcases in place

Leave a comment

Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains, Home & Family

Tagged as garden, House Work, John, WP668

May 20, 2008 · 12:23 pm

Matilija poppy

On June 3, 2005, I wrote about the two matilija poppy plants (Romneya coulteri) going into my garden. Matilija poppies are a Southern California native plant that can grow to eight feet tall. Matilija is probably a Chumash Indian word but many people pronounce it as if it was Spanish. The flowers look like big fried eggs balanced on top of long grey-green stems. Matilija poppies are mostly grown from cuttings and, once established, can take over large areas. I have dedicated a whole section of our river bank to matilija poppy colonization.

One of my 2005 poppies died in its first year but the second is strong and now in full bloom. When I was taking photos of the flowers, I caught a bonus image of a yellow butterfly pretending to be a poppy leaf.

1 Comment

Filed under News & Reviews

Tagged as garden, San Jose, Willow Glen

May 5, 2008 · 6:08 pm

Caboose Work Update

Last weekend, John was wearing his OpenSolaris Governing Board hat at the 2nd OpenSolaris Developer Summit on the University of California at Santa Cruz campus. Today, he is at the CommunityOne event at The Moscone Center in San Francisco and JavaOne starts tomorrow, also at Moscone.

So, I have been gardening but we haven’t gotten much done on WP668, our backyard caboose. However, four caboose projects which depend on other people’s work are creeping toward completion:

The metal roof should be installed on within a week – I am waiting for the
exact date to be set.
I ordered the Western Pacific Feather River Route replacement decal today
(from the Western Pacific Railroad Museum in Portola, they had extras). The metal
plate on which the decal will go is is 23-1/2″ tall by 25-1/2″ wide.
The new subfloor and linoleum go in on 19-20 May.
Vince Taylor may have the stained glass panels done this month. He came by on Saturday to show me the scale drawings and more glass samples. He would have been done sooner but had a big show at Filoli which changed his schedule.

Leave a comment

Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains

Tagged as garden, John, San Francisco, San Jose, WP668

April 29, 2008 · 4:12 pm

Cottonwood Fairy Fuzz

The female Cottonwood polar trees along the Guadalupe River behind our house are now filling the air with fuzzy seeds. Sometimes when the wind blows, it looks like a snow storm or a great invasion of tiny white fairies. We know where all of the spider webs are on the house, garden, and our backyard caboose, WP668, because they are full of cottonwood seeds. This happens every year but the volume of seeds is still awesome. Some photos:

Windowsill with seeds

Seeds in window web

Seeds in caboose web

Seeds in Aloe Web

Seeds in cactus web

Seeds on geranium buds

1 Comment

Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as garden, San Jose, Willow Glen

April 1, 2008 · 12:41 pm

New Fence in Willow Glen

January’s storms blew down the 94′ fence which runs along the side of WP668, our backyard caboose. On the other side of the fence, one of the San Jose community gardens and Guadalupe River embankment land belongs to the Santa Clara Valley Water District. It took me many weeks work, including getting a formal permit document from the SCV Water District, to arrange for a new fence. Last week, it was finally installed. Today, SCV Water District inspected it and found it good.

John and I picked galvanized steel mesh with brown plastic slats for the fence fabric instead of the wood used in the old fence. Not only was a metal and plastic fence less expensive than wood but, while the new fence is not pretty, it is very durable and will never look worse.

During the 3 day installation, we were surprised to find that the fence runs on top of what was once the concrete foundation of a chicken barn. We already knew that our home was on land that was a chicken ranch in the 1920s but we didn’t know just where the barn was until the new fence posts hit concrete. One of the community garden old timers told John that the gardeners there often hit barn concrete. We ended up paying extra for Duran Fencing (San Jose, CA) to pound holes through that foundation. Duran did a good job (and squashed as few of my border plants as possible in the process).

While the fence was down, we got to visit the community garden plots and take pictures of the side of WP668 we don’t usually see from a distance. Photos follow.

Blown down old fence

Old fence gone

John raking debris

Fence line

WP668 caboose

New posts

Wetting new concrete

New posts standing

Rails and Fabric

Unrolling fence fabric

Unrolling new fence

Last fencing roll

New fence!

Community garden

Leave a comment

Filed under Home & Family

Tagged as garden, House Work, San Jose, Willow Glen, WP668

March 18, 2008 · 10:50 pm

Bougainvillea in Bondage (Photos)

When we flew to Mulege, Baja Mexico last month, we saw many lovely bougainvillea vines in full bloom, some trained as small trees with trunks often a foot or more wide. I decided to convert my backyard Barbara Karst Bougainvillea into a small tree. This
will give us a red flowering canopy in the summer and, as the vines grow thicker and develop bark, should also protect the tropical plant against the short winter freezes we get here in San Jose, California. This also allowed us to remove the garden fence which is no longer needed because we replaced our pool with WP668, our backyard caboose.

I started with the vine spread out along a black metal garden fence. Over two days, I compressed the thorny vines into a column using green plastic garden tape. Finally, I enclosed the compressed vines between three black metal panels which are zip tied together. (I removed the garden tape after enclosing the vines between the panels.) My vine is now a 6′ column with a fountain of vines coming out the top. It looks squashed at the moment but it is growing fast. Here is how far I have gotten on this project:

Vine tree in Baja

My Vine Blooming in 2007

Step One – Tie it Up

Step Two – Vine In Bondage

Leave a comment

Filed under News & Reviews

Tagged as garden, House Work, Mexico

February 11, 2008 · 4:02 pm

Caboose Stained Glass Update

The restoration of WP668, our backyard caboose, is making progress:

Last weekend, John continued to install the wood facing which holds the new window frame in the bay. (For comparison, I included a photo of what WP668’s damaged bay window looked like when we first saw it in December 2005.)
Last month’s storms blew down our 94′ fence which runs along the side of WP668. I am working to get that replaced. I already had Davey Tree out to trim the trees and dracenas in the way of the new fence.
Stained glass artist Vince Taylor brought by his drawing for WP668’s new window, along with some glass samples. If you look closely at my photo of Vince’s drawing below, you will see the silhouette of a train in the hills. Vince is using the photo by Dave Stanley below as inspiration for the train image. (1973 photo used with permission of Dave Stanley.) Vince is also going to add a lizard silhouette to one of the rocks in the foreground.