Saturday, September 22, 2007

Free plants by mail.

Here is the giveaway!

I am giving away the clones of this plant:


This plant likes full sun. good indoor plant during the cold season. Great velociraptor markings on outer parts of leaves. watch it clone as well! the edges of the leaves curl up and look like toothy jaws. in short- this plant is the species awesome jawsome.

Email me at meminecaroline@gmail.com with your address. i promise i am not a weirdo stalker. a PO box will work great too. postage free, especially if you send me something in return.

A note to alaska: please take advantage of this great offer. i know i can bike to your house, but a plant by mail is so much fun.

A note to eli: this will make a perfect pet for you and jessica.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

sorry for the lapse

I have been greatly pressed for time lately. I have decided to take some life enriching classes at the community college. I also got in a bike wreck, completely my fault. i was being unsafe and silly. i have abrasions on my hands, lots of bruises, and a good shiner near my eye that will fetch me fifty points of street cred- wut wut?

i have been concentrating more on math, painting my kitchen, hanging out with good friends, letting the pavement kick my ass, and working on some art projects in the mean time. However, i promise to post something soon.

Usually when i have nothing to write about, i opt for the always good dinner recipes and the amazing link to something fantastic. keep in mind my left hand is throbbing with pain so it is hard for me to type. ok. here we go.


Amazing Dinner!!! Broccoli+Beets=<3

1. in a large skillet, brown some finely chopped garlic in some margarine.

2. throw in some florets of broccoli (one big tree) and a couple of diced beets.
you'll know when it's ready when the broccoli has shrunk and wilted. another good indication of it's readiness is when you burn the inside of your mouth with a good firm, but not hard, cube of delicious beet.

3. pour on some balsamic vinegar. about an eighth of a cup should do, depending on your taste.

4. drizzle on some extra virgen olive oil. and salt&pepper to taste.

serves 2-3.

Try this dish with some angel hair pasta. Or tortellini!

The reason why this is so good is because the broccoli florets soak up all the flavors. The beets add a subtle sweet taste and a divine color. This combination creates a very light late dinner, something that does not overwhelm. Try it with a shiraz. another perk to this dish is that it takes about 15-20 minutes to prepare start to finish.

Did i mention broccoli and beets are both amazing power foods exploding with vitamins?

oh yea, and the beet was once considered to be the devil's bleeding heart. how can you not like beets?


amazing link! architects from the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) design green homes that make me love







This one is my favorite, with some awesome pictures. a must see, i promise.
click here --> Dezeen

Saturday, September 1, 2007

urbanizing space, from the development firms to everyday gardens.

Yesterday I went to LA to visit my mother and my best friend. On the way, NPR was broadcasting a roundtable discussion between a representative from an urban development firm, the deputy mayor of LA, and a resident of the Simi Valley area concerning the application of sales tax revenue which funds public works such as roads, water, libraries, post offices, etc.

In large populated cities where public services are more needed, space is limited. A huge Walmart or Costco is definitely out of the picture. Development firms are becoming wiser and trying to maximize small urban spaces by building up, instead of the outward sprawl they're used to doing in the past.

They call this urbanizing space.

I am a big fan of upward spreading. When I was little, I imagined a mansion to be a tall slim tower opposed to a huge sprawl. Growing up in LA, I thought the only way to build my future mansion was up, not out.

Malibu Mansion:


My Mansion:

I kid you not, this was the drawing I had spent hours and days drawing over and over again.

Well anyway, while I was listening to the NPR program, I started to think about upward spreading. Here in Riverside (Urban Sprawl, USA), much of the buildings are short, low to the ground, and a huge waste of space. (I have not ridden an elevator for about 3 years now.) The city is remodeling the Downtown Library by expanding out. When I heard these plans, I was saddened because there is a nice lawn in front of the library. The new plans would expand the front of the building out to the street, eliminating the lawn, the trees, and the nice benches. I wonder why they can't build up, instead of out.

I also started to think about my garden. With it's limited space, I am now starting to run out of space. I have been throwing plants together in sharing containers, but I would really like to have another raised box to grow more stuff. So I started thinking what if my garden was like a high-rise apartment? That would surely work. Better yet, I began to think about plants themselves, and how they structure themselves to be the most efficient at gathering sunlight. What if we could imitate them and appropriate nature's mathematical designs? There has to be a reason why plants evolved over millions of years, why not adopt some of their lessons?

This plant has been featured several times before. Can you tell this is one of my favorites? When you look at it from a bird's eye view, the leaves whorl around the stem in order to achieve maximum sunlight. When you draw radians through the leaves, you come across this formation:


I assumed this famous trigonometric diagram...


...as a schematic for an urbanized planter:


And upon rendering, the planter would look something like this:


This is really interesting to me. I will try to work out some more designs for planters.