Recycled Solar

Recycled Solar

Recycled Solar

Take the label off a clear plastic 2 liter
soda/pop/tonic bottle.
Cut the bottom off the bottle.
Plant a seed.
              Press the edge of the bottomless bottle 
              into the soil around it.

The bottomless bottle is now a cloche or hot cap,
allowing earlier planting.

Open the bottomless bottle's bottle top 
for warm days and close 
it 
   for cold nights.

Take the labels off a few more
clear plastic 2 liter soda/pop/tonic bottles.
Fill them with water
and surround the bottomless bottle cloche hot cap.
Tie a string around this circle
and pull it tight.

During the day, the bottles of water
get warm
         and stay warmer longer at night.

This recycled solar cloche
can take a month off planting season.

If you have green
plastic 2 liter soda/pop/tonic bottles,
place them on the North side
of the solar circle.
                     The darker the bottle
the hotter the water gets
in the sunlight.

This is a two tone solar cloche.

Take some silver paint
and paint the backs of
the green bottles
                  to reflect
                   light back 
into the system
and you have a
               three tone tuned
                     solar
                    cloche.

I built one once
for Candide's garden.

Folding the Circle

A friend was just visiting and brought the book, _The Geometry of Wholemovement_ by Bradford Hansen-Smith (ISBN 1-887229-24-8)

Hansen-Smith folds complex polyhedra out of circles, specifically paper pie plates. He writes of his method: "There was no measurement, only the proportional movement of dividing into the circle. I could form a circle into a tetrahedron, truncate it, reform it into an octahedron, into a tetrahelix, transform it into a cube and a hundred other spatial configurations simply by an in-and-out moving of a pattern of folded lines."

The book is excellent. You can get it from the author:
Bradford Hansen-Smith
4606 N Elston #3
Chicago, IL 60630
bradhs@interaccess.com
www.wholemovement.com
773-794-9764