This year I’m re-landscaping the backyard out of necessity. Prior owners installed ceder trees and juniper bushes which means that each year allergy sufferers live for a month within the “life-in-death” nightmare described by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It’s nearly hell!

They also poorly engineered a deck and built it without a permit and mounted it to the foundation of the house. What I mean is the numskulls took the protective siding off the house and without flashing or caulking just bolted the deck beams into the sill plate and stem wall. It’s now rotted and needs to be replaced. We knew the yard needed work when we bought the house, but the expense is insane! For removing rocks (that were put down directly in the dirt… that means without any tarp or weed guard), tearing down a rotting deck, removing several of the ill-placed deck posts, regrading the lawn for drainage and installing a new sprinkler system (the old one died) the cost went over $9k.

Word to the wise out there… clearing out a yard can be as expensive as putting in a new one. This holds particularly true if the previous owners didn’t think ahead, didn’t pull any permits, and didn’t do the yard right.

So since we have to invest so much money into the yard, I’ve thought of doing some magic on it. If Disney could make a castle look bigger than it really is, why can’t I make a yard look bigger, too?

The August 15th 2010 post on Ray Kleim’s Haunted Dimensions about Fred Joerger made me think about how this could be done. Objects at the back of the yard need to be slightly smaller and slightly up hill compared to items closer to the door and windows of the back yard. To avoid flooding issues, I refuse to grade the yard to slope uphill from the house, but placing items such as bird baths on a brick to raise it an inch is doable. Here’s the “formula” I discovered. Whether it’s the correct math or not, I don’t know. It’s just from observation.

The size of the distant item can be mimicked by a smaller yet closer item of size X when the percent difference of the two objects are reflected by the distance between them (Distance B) and the distance of the smaller item to the eyes of the beholder (Distance A).

Viewer …[distance A]… Small Item …[distance B]… Large Distant Item
Viewer …………………[Total Distance]……………… Large Distant Item

If the small item is 50% the size of the large item, distance A and B are the same. If the small item is 25% the size of the large item, distance A is 25% of the Total Distance. To create a perceived distance that extends my back yard another 5 feet, the fence plank dimensions along the back need to be reduced by a percent of B/T given that B = perceived additional distance and T = total actual + perceived distance.

Since my yard from the back door to the back fence is approximately 45 feet, the formula would be 5/(45+5) or 5/50 or 10%. So if the planks are 6′x6″, I would shave 10% off of all sides, making them actually 90% their actual size. This would require shaving roughly 7″ from it’s height and 1/4″ from each side of the plank. To make it look near perfect, I’d need to raise the ground along the back fence by 3″ to 4″. As mentioned before, I don’t plan on regrading the yard, but I could add a couple of inches more rock along the bottom of the fence.

What would all this achieve? The perception, from looking out the back windows of the house, of a yard that’s 225 sq feet larger than it actually is. The trade-off is that from the back of the yard looking towards the house, the yard would “feel” smaller.

Learn about forced perspective from the following videos:
LOTR Forced Perspective Moving Camera (and platform)

Ames Room Illusion – Temple Grandin

30 months ago I started growing out my hair. The first few months it was because a few of the guys in the office had the wild notion of growing out their hair to thwart the middle age that had come upon them. But at that point I realized this could become much more.

For some reason I thought hair could grow an inch a month, and having a good employment from a company that seeks out ways to help the community, there was support from them as well as my family to continue after this goal.

The truth is that my hair grew out only a third to a quarter of an inch a month, making it a 30 month run before I could cut my hair without shaving myself bald.

I chose Wigs for Kids for several reasons. First and foremost, they ask no money from those who receive the wigs. Secondly, they focus their attention on children. I remember being constantly picked on and abused by my peers throughout the schooling years so this was a personal goal to help at least one child not suffer the humiliation I went through. Finally, because they have such strict requirements, very few of the donations are thrown away or sold. People who participate in Wigs for Kids don’t do it on a whim and are careful to make sure the hair gets to them in a qualified manner.

As an adult with a full head of hair I was criticized by those around me. Although it’s certain the judgmental behavior came from people of all ages, it was children who out of natural lack of verbal constraint audibly expressed condemnation. I felt a need to excuse my choices and told people at random why I was growing out my hair; it was often because of my fear of attention rather than my desire for it that people were told my motives.

Children usually don’t get that chance with their peers from whom biting harsh words are thrown. When dignity and support is torn from a child it ripples into the rest of their lives. Likewise, when support is given in the face of indignant situations, it can make a child stronger – possibly even a Tour de force that positively impacts other lives.

As it turned out, last weekend I reached my goal! To make the finish line even more emotional, the barber who cut my hair has a niece with leukemia. Even in rough economic times we can help. If you’re not growing out your hair, raise awareness. Pass around addresses to the facebook video or to one of the blogs or posts. Tweet it. Get people involved in hair clubs where, instead of trying to grow hair for themselves people are growing their hair for others.

Peace!

Today I have to admit that many of my blog posts aren’t useful. Instead of providing information to help others deal with serious, personal issues … and rather than giving some level of relief or insight, I’ve bantered about notions and ideas that don’t encourage or support people in these difficult times.

The Paurian Cafe started out as a sounding board, but as time passes, and as I supposedly mature, it becomes more apparent that personal sounding boards and web journals generally don’t help the public who have an actual and realized need.

What do people need? What do they want? Where are we heading from this point?

Irresponsible people in government have an idealistically optimist outlook. They have for years. A politically influential man told me in June 2008 that we had eight more years before our nation would collapse. That in eight years, we would no longer be “America”. He didn’t say we wouldn’t be “America as we know it,” but that we would no longer be American soil. I wish I had started investing in gold then. I thought of doing it last spring, but decided to put that money towards refinancing our house to lower the monthly payments. We’re living in times where every decision we make is invariably a bad one depending on who you listen to.