Category Archives: Uncategorized

Went to the Red Hen Baking Cafe today around 8am. Stayed till 3pm. Worked on some artwork and my landscape design website. I really enjoyed myself. Came home tonight, tired, so I cut my hair. It looks like Conan with brown locks, not orange. Should probably spend the money and get it trimmed.

Barn Art: pen sketch, digital graphics from photos and color gradients. Photoshop.

Landscape Website

One of the things I felt susceptible to in Europe was my hankering for Nicotine. It wasn’t my tendency to leave things behind (forgetfulness) or thrill of spending money I don’t have (I stretched it pretty far). In fact, I love a good cigarette, especially when I’m outside, talking with friends and possibly drinking a glass of wine. It’s the European image that gets in my head and says hey, live a little, relax, have a smoke.

I think it’s a problem because instead of going out for a walk, or doing some gardening, or even making a direct b-line for a nice outdoor space, you settle for a strip of shrubs along the road, next to cars which are also spewing CO2. Pretty gross.

Personally, I find smoking distracted me socially (from better conversations to personal engagement like missing social cues), spiritually (neglecting my need to go outside frequently), and physically (my body reacted with hot sweats and a cough).

Communally, these problems did not impact my studio group. We continued to visit sites, we met to eat dinner each night. But still, the question still lingers, if I had an experience that replaced my cigarettes, what would it look like? And how could it benefit the group, rather than take away?

I queued into smoking behaviors in Portugal and here’s what I observed:

-Portuguese people smoke a lot, especially tourists

-Hand-rolled cigarettes are less addictive than cigarettes because the tobacco has fewer additives. Making the practice healthier. I learned this from a Ukrainian friend who shared his hand rolled tobacco with me. He said he went from 1 pack a day to 5 or less per day. I’m riding around 1 cigarette per day. I’d like to be at zero, forever.

-The Portuguese government puts graphic pictures on the packs to deter smoking. This originally stopped me, but then I settled for a pack that said, “smoking might make you impotent.” This is perhaps my greatest fear. And somehow, this was the pack I used from!! Whoa.

-The Contents store in Portugal is a new mega mart. It’s like American Wal Mart. They joke and call it “Incontinents,” according to my new English friend Kyle from Broom-Town England. When I went to the Contents store to look for water color paper, I went to the “Notas” to see if they had any. While I took a number and waited, I witnessed people buying cigarettes in cartons and lottery tickets by the armful. Surprising.

-More people smoking in vehicles. As if a running car wasn’t enough, I watched rush-hour traffic yesterday afternoon. Many people were in their car alone, smoking. The one person I can remember actually had an electric car, which makes me think there is sort of a guilt paradox to running a petroleum fueled vehicle and smoking.

-Disposables. Trash. Butts litter the streets, and not the good kind. They’re there too, but it’s hard to imagine a curb line without a ton of cigarettes mashed in the crack beside it.

As I move forward with my landscape architecture project, I think that there could be many approaches to attack smoking habits. I will look into a matrix of all the ways company’s and programs go about helping people kick the habit. Then, I will design a smoking garden. Maybe I’ll design a thing that can help replace the desire. Or maybe I’ll design a smoke-free place, like a hammock over a Japanese Garden (something ultimate for smoking, which is prohibited). Or maybe I’ll cue in on the threshold areas, the the fronts of office buildings, stores and restaurants to create an experience that is both “hygge,” (Danish for cozy, warm, together) but actually cleanses and replaces nicotine addiction with something more refreshing. Then there’s simply quitting, and consuming natural plants and medicines that have properties which fight against nicotine’s toxins and help regrow saratonin and other brain chemicals that cigarette and other tobacco smoke like cigars, destroy.

I’m doing this for Bizzle too (our family pet), as cigarette butts and dog poop are one way to ruin a nice city, and I find myself competing for and settling for outdoor space and with both! And I deserve better.

I’m excited to look for Palms, and do so using soil maps of the area to generally pick where some species might be.

Soil Map:

This is a map of my Area of Interest, including the Denham Springs Conservation and Frenchtown Road. Frenchtown Road Park:

We hiked Frenchtown Park earlier this semester with my studio class. It is a BREC Park and features a grove of Bamboo native to Louisiana. The Bamboo trail has a lot of soil diversity, which I’m able to tell by comparing the two maps below. Looking at the Denham Springs Conservation ( I also call this the Amite River Easement), I’m seeing some soil diversity at the edges of the conservation– where the roads and development ends and at the edge of the water–especially where the beaches are.

DRb, SAb, OUa soil types appear closest the Bamboo Trail. DRb is a very fine sandy soils, SAb is silty loam and OUa is also silty loam, but more frequently flooded. OUa is the dominant soil in the region. Since the other soils are minor, and they have similar characteristics to the major soil, they are called non-contrasting. Minor soil types with different characteristics than their parents are called contrasting.

I would expect contrasting minor soil types where the bamboo grows, because Bamboo, a monocot, is unlike the other trees in the Spruce Pine Forest.

When we visit the Denham Springs Easement, I’m hoping we can follow a guide of trails. The paths used to be maintained by the owner of the property. I even believe I made note of which house along the easement owned the property and maintained the trails. We should visit him and ask his permission to explore the land.

In addition to the trails told verbally to me during the community meeting, I’d like to find Palms, Bamboo and other contrasting forest elements. Here is a draft of trails that I made, based on the topography:

This is a picture of my analysis partially completed.

This is an earlier version of the trails I designed, following the topography to bridge as few waterways as possible.

Based on my trip and this experience, I’m hoping to make new recommendations as to the soil types we should be cultivating in downtown planters for things like Pixelated Parking, bioswales and raised or sunken planters. I’m also interested in furthering my knowledge of plants that might span the gap from being natural wilderness-living to living in the urban setting. The soil types downtown might be altogether unsuitable for any infiltration, and very minimal plant growth. In this case I’ll have to learn the flora that live in nutrient-poor soils, and how to combine them with plants that can at least start a growth cycle in poor soils before dying back. To get seasonal interest, I’ll have to find something else that stays over the winter.

Plan of entry: Park at Spring Park. After passing into the wetland area east of Spring Park, continue straight West, or if we encounter another trail, take South.

The Middle: There is to be a trail running directly to a beach in-between the yellow and the blue trails (see map below). If we don’t encounter it, it might be safest and easiest to head due West, find the Amite and follow it due South until we can hit the Railroad tracks, then follow them back (Red Trail below).

Time: I expect this route to take one to two hours. It’s about 3.5 miles total, and if we hike at a 20 minute mile pace, it will take about 1 hour and ten minutes. With stops it will take about two hours.

We will depart LSU at 2:00pm, travel for a half hour and arrive at 2:30pm. We will return at 5pm, depending on how long we hike for.

This is supposed to be a fun trip so please bring water, snacks and a good attitude to share! I will reserve a Zip Car for 3.5 hours @$10/ hr. If you have a car to offer, please let me know and we’ll use your ride instead.

This is a VW beetle and not a Zipcar.