Termite Sculptures

What if Captain Haddock from Tintin comics got troubled by the terrible termites.  What curses he would have mouthed at them?  

Termites are home owners' foe.  But nothing in Nature is 'unpurposefully created'.  They aerate the earth with their underground channels. We are living in their land!  Here is a brief list of ten facts about termites. [Click to read, informative].

I only imitate Captain Haddock with just a couple of curses when I see termites damaging wood and paper at home or in the Yarden.  They can do immense damage.  They can even reach wooden rafters and reapers as I noticed in our century old tiled roof. It was 20 feet high.  I wondered how they went so high rising 'through' the walls!  But when another old smaller structure in the premise was demolished, their handiwork was on view. Let me show some pictures. 

Removal of roof tiles exposed the work of termites on rafters resting on walls.

Look at the reaper. Teak is said to be termite resistant because they do not like the oil in it.  When the oil dries up with ageing of wood, they will be vulnerable.

There were many rafters eaten up by termites and some were precariously close to collapsing! 

This one had been lowered carefully and I observed something here!! So I asked the carpenter to cut the portion carefully.  Then I happened to find many damaged ones in the lot and set aside all those that had some appeal, before the wood was taken for resizing for reusing the fine teak wood required for the new house that has now come up.  

I had kept the others aside, as if on display. 

Now this is what I created from the great sculptures created clandestinely in the walls by the 'thundering termites'.  The set becomes a part of my Yarden. I nailed all of them in line to a termite damaged reaper which formed a base and rested on two nails on the wall. There was another termite torn plank that also went up on show.  The badly defaced pieces were used for the hot water boiler as fuel.

This is the 'Sculptor'. Many thousands of them will be working on shift basis!

Group Picture! Closer view of my latest 'Junk Project'.  That was the purpose of this post.

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Now let me show how dangerous and what a nuisance these can be.  There is no guarantee of any wood or item containing cellulose to survive.  If they are not moved or noticed, they can eat up the whole thing.  This was a 2 1/2 inch 'Termite Tower' risen from a little crack in our room floor.  They had completely eaten the books in a book shelf that was not noticed for about 2 months!  Many books were lost that way. They had come up through the wall and the shelf was embedded in the wall.

Some wood kept for a week were attacked. Look how they come up through the gaps in the floor. 

A toy bat had a lot of cellulose!! 

A simple trellis I made was damaged some years ago.

They attack the bark of trees.  

An old wooden tub attacked from its base, despite keeping on bricks. Since it was noticed soon, it could be saved.

An old radio cabinet, junked but not disposed, suffered.  They had come through the crack in the old wall.

A piece of torn rattan from a junked chair deliberately kept on the ground to see if they attacked, was surely attacked - in 4 days!

As such, I do not use much wood that touches the ground, in my Yarden.

Vintage tile chips rescued and reused

This post is an exact copy I have added to my other blog related to Gardening. [click]

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My workplace is in a century old palatial building that was built by the Mysore King.  

Cheluvamba Vilas

Some years ago, they were replacing the entire original mosaic floor of a room.  The beautiful little chips in perfect geometrical shapes and dimensions were being broken.  It was an exercise too difficult to watch and I wish not to divulge into detail. 

That is one of the three mansions built for the three Princesses at that time.  All the structures are a delight to connoisseurs.  Their interiors are exquisite.  Just to show how varied the patterns and colours were, in many such palatial buildings, let me show you the flooring of the other mansion [Karanji Mansion] which I visited some time ago.

This was not in good shape.

Now it houses the PTC.

Now let me come to ours.  Pictured below is a portion of the original floor and design the entire floor area had.  Observe the shapes and colours. They had been imported from England at the time of building these mansions.  Such mosaic floors of that period are so pleasing to the eye.

The broken floor debris were being heaped in the room to be loaded to trucks for landfills.  So sad.  Being a lover of heritage, I thought of preserving a tiny portion of these chips in my home.  In "Dave's Garden" I had seen what gardeners create with mosaic chips.  So I randomly picked up some of those to try my hand.  Mosaic art is a vast and creative subject many gardeners and hobbyists do for passion.

'Stepping stones' was an idea I had in mind. Those chips were now separate.  I tried different combinations and found that many different patterns were possible.  I set about working on the project.  Sand and cement were ready.  I put a piece of chicken mesh at the bottom for extra strength and carefully filled cement and placed the chips in the patterns I created.  See picture of 'work in progress': 

Five distinct patterns were made from the available good chips and embedded the 'stepping stones' in my yard, after proper curing.

The following picture shows the work I did in the centre of our living room with better pieces. 

But now we can see only one half of it.  Shortly after this was created, it so happened that a wall ran through the hall at that very spot.  Picture below shows the base for the wall getting ready. Observe the visible portion of tiles. 

Rustic Garden Board

There was a small wooden staircase on the open balcony having 5 planks for steps.  Two were missing and the rest were rickety.  It was a risky affair to step on them. We had to jump down or climb back, with the support of the old and shaky wooden handrails.  You cannot blame the carpenter because it bore the brunt of all weather since 1911 without a break.

Redoing with new planks was a costly affair.  So, I removed the planks and built the steps myself out of bricks and stone slabs [see picture below]. This was some years ago when we moved in to live in the house built by my great grandfather in the year mentioned above.  It had been rented out from 1950 to 1997 to the same tenant.  Tenants cannot be expected to take care of these things!

Seen in this picture is what I built after removing the planks.

These teak wood planks were now useless for any other wood work.  I had kept them aside along with other junk, instead of using them as firewood, but that is not the mentality of 'junk accumulators'!

In the meanwhile, I had come across a nice gardening website, Dave's Garden, where gardeners had shared their pictures.  It was about creative use of old wood.  They were used as name boards and nicely displayed, as if it was old.  Rustic.  After seeing such pictures, I thought there was a new project for me to do at home with these.  

What to engrave on them?  It is two feet across. To imitate 'Dave's Garden' I thought of 'Dinu's Garden'.  The letters were 'one too many' for that width and needed to be shortened.  So I remembered another word from my younger days when I used to read a lot of wonderful comic stories of The Phantom.  In one of them, there was 'Isle of Eden'.  Here, The Phantom had kept his pets - tigers, lions and many species of animals all living in harmony.  The word 'Eden' seemed to fit in to the width of the plank. I wanted it to sound like Dave's Garden [DG], due to my obsession with it, but in the end, it turned out to be 'Dinu's Eden'. The engraved portion was painted with 'poster colour' for visual effect.

This is in the garden which has shifted now.

This was placed in the new yard on the other side of the plot.

Googling to link Phantom's Eden, I am glad I found this place where you can read the entire comic - Isle of Eden.  [click on the link]. In fact, there is a great fan following of Lee Falk's Phantom, even now!  

My carpentry skills and some patience came in handy.  Patience, because the surface of the plank is so brittle that it had to be engraved very carefully, lest the wood chipped away. Cutting the letters was a precision job.

Close up showing wood surface

Fortunately, it came off well, much to my delight.  "Dinu's Eden" is where many critters and creatures live in harmony, like in Phantom's Eden, if not tigers, lions or elephants.

Some photos.

This board will take another place as more changes have taken place to this side of the yard and is now having a smaller garden area. This is a picture from the recent archive. 

Some changes can be seen to that part of the yard here.  

It has been exposed to the vagaries of climate all of its hundred years. It should last for some more years since it is now not facing the sky.  It will be put up once the reshaped garden gets ready. 

How all this started, the inspiration behind

Browsing one of the discussion threads on my favourite websites Dave's Garden, one day, the above photo, posted by one 'faywray' caught my attention.  I looked at it once, twice, thrice.... somehow I could not ignore this.  Without the permission from the poster of that photo, I copied it, only for my viewing on my PC.  I found everything in this frame so pleasingly beautiful, esp. the colour choice and design of that house, not to speak of the road curve. My attention then shifted to the greenery around, not to forget that this was in the gardening website.

That thread in that forum was longish where many ideas were shared by this 'faywray'.  Very soon, e-conversation began between this 'faywray' and me, almost automatically, because this person seemed to be doing what I would have done if I had been that person!  She had sent photos of how she made her patio in 8 hours, or wind chimes, or wood projects, or painting, or whatnot!  I used the word 'she' there!  In fact, I had come to know that this was one Mrs. Susan Moore, living half way round the Earth, but not in that house pictured there.  She was living there for some years but had shifted away.

Susan - in short, Sue, is an exponent in 'trash to treasure' projects and things like that. [Brilliant]Women doing things on their own like these on their own is something of a rarity, but she has a Bill [hubby] with her to assist!  I was once joking that Sue would bill Bill with her projects. I started using the word 'project' after we exchanged many mails!  Both of us had our own little projects to share!  My each work of creating something out of useless thing/s was named a 'project'.  Women are fighting for equality with men. But this Susan is not taking part, because she is already there!  She does most projects herself, with manpower from Bill, quite rightly too. Sue would sue Bill if Bill bills for the job assisted!  And there is a 'Will' to do as well.  [Their son!]

Susan once said she dislikes blogging, but had a blog.  http://faywray1.wordpress.com/  Aside from her great skills in almost whatever she does, the writing skills and the manner of expressing is also unique.

She has come up with her new blog 'Redo Redux'. [click on this] where she has started showing the projects.  Those who like recycling and 'repurposing' [this is a new word I learnt on Dave's Garden] things, her posts might be interesting. In fact, her new blog inspired me start my own, to show and document the 'crude little trash to treasure projects' that were done through me. Is it not better than saying 'I did'?  When Sue suggested about a blog, I thought this is a better idea than just posting their photos in a web album [see]. So here comes 'my blog' where I'd put down each one separately about how I went about it.  I hope this will not become a 'junk blog'!

A title was needed. There was not much thought flow, except 2-3.  Redo Redux was at the back of the mind somewhat like a guide.  Instinctively, went for 'Junk Unjunk' and did not want to change, feeling like Steve Jobs.  See how the 'bitten apple' stayed!  After I got the blog address for this, I realized that this is similar to 'lock, unlock', or 'do, undo'........

Thank you Susan.  This post is dedicated to you. I can now try to start documenting.  Of course, not in the organized way you do.  I do not have many 'before' shots to show. The camera only came to me only as recent as 2007, but began to realize the importance of step-by-step presentation much later.