Timmy the Tooth

La Liga is set to stage a regular-season match in the United States, possibly as early as this year, but the prospect of a clásico between Real Madrid and Barcelona outside Spain has been dismissed.

The league said on Thursday it is planning to play a match across the Atlantic as part of a new 15-year partnership with the sports and entertainment group Relevent to promote the game in North America. The group operates the International Champions Cup, the world’s largest summer club tournament. Barcelona and Real Madrid faced each other in the tournament in Miami last year.

First of all, he or she (just kidding, it’ll definitely be a he) won’t actually ask you whether or not you’ve read Vonnegut. Instead, they’ll start by squeezing an obscure reference to one of Vonnegut’s books into an otherwise harmless conversation. “That guy was such a Tralfamadorian,” they’ll say, perplexingly, in response to a story about how your sister just adopted a fox terrier. “Watch out for the Pluto Gang,” they’ll warn with a wink, interrupting your explanation of quantum mechanics.

At this point, there are two ways to avoid the situation that is now hurtling towards you:

One: Proclaim very loudly that a Vonnegut reference has been made. Be as specific as possible, as more generic statements (“OH, I LOVE VONNEGUT!” or “NICE! VONNEGUT IS MY FAVE!”) tend to leave room for further questioning, such as to which Vonnegut work the speaker was referring, when it was published, and what it means — no, like, what it really means.

Two: In the more likely scenario that there will not be a pause in conversation allowing you to speak, nod emphatically, clap your hands together, and fix the speaker with a firm gaze of such undeniable comprehension and awed appreciation that there can be no doubt as to whether you understood their reference.

If for some reason you are unable to perform either of these maneuvers, steel yourself for the inevitable: “What,” they’ll say, with a half-smile of expansive bemusement, “You haven’t read Vonnegut?”

Once this phrase — which is not, though it bears a misleading resemblance to one, a question — has been uttered, you have reached a point of no return. From here on out, nothing that has heretofore existed in the conversation is as important as relaying to you the significance of Vonnegut’s work.

If you are lucky, this explanation will be limited to the specific reference made, what it means in the context of that particular book, and what was so different about the way Vonnegut wrote it.

If you are not lucky, this explanation will expand to include a detailed description of your own misinformed preconceptions about Vonnegut, and why you really ought to try him anyway.

To save you time in such a situation — in which time is infinite, but still, precious — here is an abridged list of strategies which will not save you:

1. Gently inform the speaker that you have actually read Vonnegut and that you got their reference the first time.

2. Hand them the dissertation you wrote for your Ph.D. in literature, which thoroughly details Vonnegut’s influence on the sociocultural sphere in the late 20th century.

3. Hand them two dissertations you wrote for your Ph.D. in literature, both of which thoroughly detail Vonnegut’s influence on the sociocultural sphere in the late 20th century.

4. Give them a notarized copy of the book report you wrote on Player Piano in 1952.

5. Produce the stash of unpublished Vonnegut manuscripts that you keep in your handbag at all times.

6. Pull your face off to reveal that you were really Kurt Vonnegut all along.

7. Loudly recount the plotline of the most recent three episodes of Empire while they are talking.

8. Beg them to stop.

Instead, refer to this list of effective countermeasures.

1. Knock the drink out of their hands, rip your shirt off, cry “MAKE ME YOUNG!”¹ and run far, far away.

¹ That was a Vonnegut reference. Just testing you.

• Manager’s short-term fixes rejected by Ed Woodward
• Some targets viewed as no better than those already at club

Manchester United did not follow through with some of José Mourinho’s transfer targets because of misgivings about the players he had identified and a decision, from the top of the club, that he should not be allowed to get his way if it meant potentially wasting tens of millions of pounds on a short-term fix.

Related: Transfer window 2018 – every summer deal from Europe's top five leagues

Shipping containers may seem like a self-contained drag and drop solution for quick and affordable housing, but the process of making them livable is a lot more complicated than that. The premise is alluring: you reclaim one of the many disused containers found all over the world as the structural basis of a compact home, maybe stacking or otherwise combining them to create a larger structure. Insulate, add utilities, furnish, receive praise. Right?

But once you get started, you quickly realize the materials are not all that easy to work with (as some architects and engineers have been warning for years.) At best, you’re looking at some serious work reinforcing the containers so they can withstand being stacked perpendicularly. At worst, you end up with something that looks like Amazon’s new shipping container house.

Amazon seems set on making virtually anything deliverable, and now that includes houses, though the MODS 40 Foot Tiny Home is among the most expensive things anyone will ever buy on the site at $40,000. Amazon itself doesn’t manufacture the home – it’s actually made by Wisconsin-based MODS International – but it’s a first for the mega retailer, theoretically making the purchase of a home as easy as pressing the ‘Buy it Now’ button from your Amazon app. There’s just one (okay, way more than one) problem, as you may have guessed from a glance at the photos. It’s hideous. Is this what we’ve come to accept as reasonable for affordable housing in 2018?

Let’s back up a minute. Shipping container architecture can definitely be a lot nicer looking than this. It’s been done many times, notably by the firm LOT-EK, which produced all the cool PUMA pop-up shops and the stunning APAP OpenSchool in Korea. The Adriance House in Maine preserves the industrial aesthetic of the crates, placing them within a larger envelope. Casa Oruga by Sebastián Irarrázaval Delpiano cantilevers the ends of multiple containers over a hillside. Patrick Bradley’s shipping container office has a warm and welcoming look, and it’s cantilevered, too.

Take a close look at all of these projects. They’re not single bare shipping containers, primarily left as-is, nor was stacking them as easy as it appears. Shipping containers are made to be stacked vertically, not offset from each other. As architect Mark Hogan of OpenScope Studio notes, the roofs of shipping containers are made of light gauge steel, and the rails at the top aren’t structural, so this kind of stacking requires serious (and expensive) steel reinforcement. So does cantilevering. Cutting openings in the containers risks the structural integrity, so again, you’ve got to reinforce.

Then there’s the fact that heating and cooling them can be tough – passive strategies don’t work due to the nature of the container itself. It’s a lot easier to install utilities and mechanical systems if you add some kind of sheathing to the outside, which takes away the raw character of the container, if that’s the look you’re going for. You could also shelter them within a larger structure to keep them comfortable inside. Obviously, all of this ups your costs and takes away from the simplicity of the project.

That may not be a problem if you’re building a hotel, a larger multi-container home, a school or a restaurant. But when all you’re trying to do is use a single container to build a cheap house, you’re ultimately taking on a lot of work (like thoroughly cleaning out all of the industrial chemicals and pesticides) and sacrificing a lot of comfort and usability while uglying up the neighborhood in the process. There are many ways to build small houses on the cheap that don’t require welding or the use of a crane.

“Housing is usually not a technology problem. All parts of the world have vernacular housing, and it usually works quite well for the local climate. There are certainly places with material shortages, or situations where factory built housing might be appropriate – especially when an area is recovering from a disaster. In this case prefab buildings would make sense – but doing them in containers does not. …If you’re going to go through the trouble of building in factory, why not build to a dimension that is appropriate for human habitation?” – Mark Hogan, OpenScope Studio

Shipping container architecture has its place and purpose, particularly when it’s located in active or former industrial areas as a nod to the history of the setting. Since it’s fast to deploy, it can also make sense for temporary emergency housing. But it’s not particularly well suited to affordable housing for the masses, especially since developers are prone to cutting corners to save costs. Do we really want to see fields of raw single-container houses in our cities, housing shortage or no? When built on a budget, they’re likely to be far less livable than stick-built structures of the same size, and it’s not like we don’t have the technology to create better prefab solutions.

Most cities around the world are dealing with severe income inequality. With population increasing and the climate growing more unstable all the time, we’re going to need a whole lot more housing that’s not just affordable but humane – while also retaining the architectural and cultural character of individual places. It’s worthwhile to consider whether normalizing shipping container housing as a ‘budget’ solution will lead us in a direction that’s actually good for humanity, or just slide us further into the devaluation of low income people.

Iconic cities come to life in this custom wood table series, their resin streets and waterways glowing through grids of raised wooden architecture, all sitting on top of wrapping thin and dark steel supports.

Crafted by Wood Designs in Warsaw, this array of oak surfaces includes cultural capitals like New York, Berlin, London and Paris, but buyers can select a specific city or neighborhood as well.

In each piece, a layer of resin on top flattens out and protects the surfaces for everyday use, while red, blue and green resins are lit up from below, an effect making the roads and rivers look like retro etchings on a giant circuit board.

“The guiding principle of each of our products is that it is unique and also gives the interior a character in which it is located. I want my products users to give a sense of uniqueness. We believe that every detail matters.”

The smallest of the small, this two-seat micro-machine features just one (quite literal) front door positioned where one would expect to find its engine, perfect for navigating and parking on tiny European streets.

Recharging is easy since the auto can plug into a conventional socket. Finding a spot also a breeze since the little car can slide into any old narrow slot then open in front (no need for side door clearance).

The electric vehicle was debuted last year in Geneva, but had to pass a series of safety tests before it could be approved for deployment on the open road. It has gotten the green light roll out next year in Switzerland, then Germany.

Built for city driving, the car tops out at just over 55 miles per hour, but it can accelerate from 0 to 30 in five seconds. Total range is up to over 100 miles depending on the battery purchased.

1. “I’m from Washington D.C. / Cleveland / Connecticut / New York.”

2. “I’m from the D.C. area / the Cleveland area / the Tri-State Area / Westchester.”

3. “I grew up in a small town outside Washington, D.C. / right outside Cleveland / just over the New York City line / basically across the street from New York City.”

4. “As the crow flies I grew up about five miles away from Washington, D.C. / 8 miles away from Cleveland / 45 miles away from New York / 30 miles away from New York but I went there on the weekends all the time.”

5. “The geographic coordinates for my hometown are 38.9693 N, 77.0789 W / 41.4739 N, 81.5371 W / 41.0772 N, 73.4687 W / 41.0051 N, 73.7845 W and as you look that up on your phone I’m going to back away slowly before you learn that my hometown has three country clubs, each with its own proprietary china pattern and membership structure.”

6. “I was born into a family of street performers in Fairbanks / Austin / Billings / Santa Fe but when I was a month old, my parents became psychologists/lawyers/consultants/CEOs and were compelled to buy an estate just outside Washington, D.C. / Cleveland / New York / New York City for work. To answer your question, I’m from Fairbanks / Austin / Billings / Santa Fe.”

7. “After a simple childhood in a no-name town on the East Coast / in the Midwest — you want to know which one? Oh, but I can’t say — I pulled myself up by my rough-hewn, L.L. Bean bootstraps to become the person I am today. Please only focus on the person I am today in this happy-hour conversation.”

8. “Actually, I didn’t grow up anywhere — I came into being as a fully formed, woke adult right here in Silver Lake / Somerville / Bushwick /
Portland, Oregon.”

9. “I grew up very close to a public school; I just didn’t attend it. Please know that my parents are Democrats.”

I am running for Congress in Florida, and if you choose me as your Republican nominee on August 28th I solemnly pledge to eat one of President Trump’s turds.

All five Republican candidates in this race have promised blind, unwavering support for the Trump agenda. But only I have declared that I am willing to go the extra mile to show voters what true patriotism looks like.

It looks like eating a turd.

Unfortunately, President Trump has not yet asked me to eat one of his turds. Though during a recent fundraiser in Tallahassee I did raise the possibility with him. The president praised the idea, saying: “Sure, maybe. Maybe we can set that up.”

At this, I gave a crisp salute and then grabbed a tureen of scalding hot soup from a nearby table and upended it over my head, while shrieking, “I DO THIS FOR YOU, O GREAT ONE!”

This is why I am covered in second-degree burns in some of my newer campaign ads. It is also why I am the best choice to represent my district in the One Hundred Sixteenth Congress.

The so-called frontrunner in this race, Dan Brufroy recently told the editorial board of The Miccosukee Herald-Courier that if he wins the nomination he will personally wring all the sweat out of one of Donald Trump’s old socks and lap it up like a “little baby kitty cat.”

Pshaw, talk about a RINO. If Dan is not willing to gobble down one of the president’s steaming hot poohs, can he really be counted on to reflexively support the president 100% of the time, no matter what? I don’t think so.

Some members of the Fake News Media have pointed out that another opponent, former Florida Commissioner of Education Ted Olruyd, has said that he will “hungrily consume whatever the Immortal God-King Trump doth command [him] to” and that this technically includes turds. First, this guy is totally copying me. Second, if you read the entirety of Ted’s statement, he clearly specifies that he’ll only eat a turd if he can put hot sauce on it.

No thanks, Ted. No hot sauce for me. America first.

By now you all know that my main campaign promise is that I will eagerly snarf Trump feces if asked, but today I am proud to announce a broad slate of other things I would unquestioningly do for our Commander-in-Chief:

• Lie flat on my back and let him hit golf balls off a tee clenched in my teeth
• Offer him the right of Prima Nocta if I ever get married (Yes, this is me proposing, Janine!)
• Go and buy him McDonald’s totally nude
• Switch places with him so it looked like I was driving during a car accident
• Allow his rambunctious elder sons to “suplex” me
• Let him bury me alive
• Eat one of his Trump Steaks

I hope these promises make it abundantly clear: there is no one in this race more slavishly devoted to our president than me.

OK, fine, you could maybe argue that State Senator Dale Stukle — who set himself on fire, like the famous Vietnamese monk, to honor Donald Trump — had me beat, but that guy’s dead now, so you can’t vote for him.

In conclusion, as the most conservative, least dignified candidate running, I would be honored to have your primary vote on August 28th and in the general election on November 6th. As your Congressman, know that I will thoughtlessly defend whatever the president says or does, even in the vanishingly rare instances when the tiny, shattered remnants of my (already defective!) moral compass may tell me otherwise. After all, somebody has to keep the Democrats in check.

And I swear to you that if and when the fateful day comes I will answer the call. I already have a little bib with a big T on it. T for Trump; T for turd.

In fact, I never take it off.

You love your grandma’s homemade sandwich bread recipe, but wish it was just a bit more tender and less crumbly. You’ve found a recipe online for cinnamon rolls but are bummed at how quickly they harden up and become dry once they’re out of the oven. Want to make your favorite yeast bread and rolls […]

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The broadcaster’s efforts at Russia 2018 were the TV equivalent of Marouane Fellaini, a player who tries to do everything and succeeds at almost nothing

Ratings in the US for this year’s World Cup are down significantly on 2014 and if reports are correct, Fox Sports will lose money on its coverage of the tournament. Fox executives will no doubt point to the mitigating factors: the unfavorable time zone; the absence of the US men’s national team; perhaps even the unexpected failure of big teams such as Spain, Germany and Argentina. On the other hand, this has been the most exciting World Cup in decades. If Fox has missed an opportunity to reel in casual American fans and get them excited about soccer, and it almost certainly has, that’s down to one thing: Fox’s own coverage of the tournament. It has been appalling.

OK, that’s maybe not entirely fair. The coverage has not been quite as horrendous as it promised to be before the tournament. But it’s still been poor. The network has had plenty of time to get things right too: Fox secured the rights to the 2018 and 2022 tournaments in late 2011, and the following year hired David Neal, a veteran producer who worked on nine Olympic Games for NBC, to oversee its coverage. This is perhaps when the rot began to set in: Fox insiders told the Guardian that Neal mostly staffed his World Cup team with the network’s existing roster of baseball, Nascar and NFL producers, whereas Fox’s soccer group – which handles year-round coverage of the sport, including the Champions League and MLS – was left in a largely peripheral support role.

Standing nearly 40 feet tall, this giant arcing whale is composed entirely of plastic waste gathered from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, carefully assembled in a canal of Bruges, Belgium.

Following a Liquid City theme, Brooklyn designers from STUDIOKCA chose the form to help observes visualize the magnitude and shape of both what winds up clogging the world’s oceans and the creatures impacted.

The net effect is striking, the arched water mammal rising up from the deep in a graceful curve, which, upon closer inspection, is made up of white and blue refuse, stamped with languages and brands from around the world.

Dubbed Skyscraper, the sculpture brings together 4,000 square feet of discarded plastic gathered in Hawaii beach cleanups, a small fraction of the 150 million tons currently lost at sea.

And while the majestic sea creature ricing from the canal might seem large, “pound for pound that is more plastic waste swimming in the ocean than there is whales,” say the creators. “So an opportunity like this to show the type of plastic and the amount of plastic that ends up in our oceans is really important.”

To begin using our app, enter your location, your time frame, and your husband’s level of wokeness. We promise not to share any of this information, though it’s probably all online anyway. Based on the data collected, we will recommend the ideal Daughter to match your husband’s needs.

There are currently three Daughter models available. Please read the descriptions carefully so you can select the Daughter most capable of fixing your husband’s deep personal flaws.

Daughter 1 – Sharon

Sharon is in second grade, where she deals with boys who not only tease her for being bossy, but also prevent her from playing kickball because she’s a girl. This has already made Sharon unsure whether she likes sports and doubt herself in the classroom, where she hesitates to raise her hand even when she knows the answer to a question.

Expected Effect: Seeing Daddy’s little girl experience sexism at such a young age will devastate your husband. Up until now, he has never once contemplated what life is like from a woman’s perspective, and thanks to Sharon’s school troubles, he will extrapolate that girls are taught to fundamentally take up less space as a result of societal pressures despite being intelligent and capable.

Daughter 2 – Mallory

13-year-old Mallory is already feeling pressure to wear makeup and dress promiscuously so as to please boys. She also recently set up her first social media account, but soon had to make it private because strangers and bots harassed her.

Expected Effect: Mallory will shock your husband, who did not know the extent to which women are objectified and told to look nice if they want to be seen. He will be disgusted by how these gender-specific societal burdens are placed on the impressionable shoulders of a young preteen. Your husband will also believe that his sweet Daughter is beautiful just as she is, and begin to question the ulterior motives of the make-up industry.

Daughter 3 – Darla

Darla is 18 and looking for a part-time job, but unable to land one because the interviewers can’t stand her shrill voice. They think her experience is lacking, her appearance is distracting, and her emotions are too emotional. Fun twist: Darla is about to be a college student who’s worried that boys will drug or assault her at parties.

Expected Effect: Your husband will learn how women are underpaid and underestimated. He will experience growing fear about his girl going to college (they grow up so fast!) where she may be attacked by a man who sees her as only a body. Eventually, your husband will finally stop rolling his eyes at the #MeToo movement and start to actively support it.

Note: You may rent more than one Daughter as a time, as men can be incredibly oblivious and require more than one woman to recognize them as humans. The renting costs are 78% cheaper than our services on the sibling Rent-A-Son app, which is for men who want their home to be a safe space for masculinity.

If for some reason the Daughter proves unsuccessful in turning your husband from a misogynistic pig to a normal, functioning human, we will refund you immediately. We are aware that the responsibility of this mental transition belongs entirely to the Daughter and not your husband.

• Fulham sign £25m Jean Michaël Seri from Nice
• Barça sign €36m Lenglet as Everton chase Digne

West Ham have agreed a club record €38m (£33.5m) deal to sign Felipe Anderson from Lazio, with the Brazilian winger set for a medical on Friday.

Related: Aaron Ramsey an important part of my Arsenal plans, insists Unai Emery

Cristiano Ronaldo is joining Juventus after the Italian club agreed a €100m (£88.3m) fee for the Portugal forward with Real Madrid.

The 33-year-old is ready for a new challenge after nine years at Real and asked the La Liga club to let him go. The player and his agent, Jorge Mendes, met the Juventus chairman, Andrea Agnelli, in Greece on Tuesday to discuss the final details of the deal. Ronaldo is signing a four-year contract with an annual salary of around €30m. In Italy clubs have to pay the same amount in tax, which takes the total cost of the transfer to €340m (€100m transfer fee plus €240m in salary and taxes).

• Midfielder says team will take ‘aggressive’ style into semi-final
• Kyle Walker: ‘It’s the best opportunity that England’s ever had’

England are confident they will beat any lingering effects of fatigue from an increasingly hectic campaign by the time they start their first World Cup semi-final in 28 years, and are hopeful an unchanged lineup can exploit tiredness in Croatia’s ranks.

Their opponents at the Luzhniki Stadium on Wednesday have been extended to extra time and penalty shootouts in each of their knockout games, against Denmark and Russia, and played against the hosts in Sochi on Saturday evening after England’s far more comfortable success over Sweden. They have serious doubts over the availability of their goalkeeper Danijel Subasic and the right-back Sime Vrsaljko.

Two women on front row who watched World Cup Colombia match on phone enraged actors

Actors in a musical have expressed their outrage after audience members watched England’s nail-biting penalty shootout with Colombia on their phones during a show.

It’s become the talking point of the tournament but where does the term come from? And what are its worst examples?

Shithousery is a fairly nebulous term, taking in as it does pretty much all the dark arts employed on a football pitch – everything from diving to headbutting via haranguing the referee and time-wasting. Generally, in its most simple guise, shithousery is an attempt to gain an advantage by unfair means and therefore it has existed around football for a long time.

But from where does the phrase originate? Well, it has been around for a long time. Tony Crowley’s Liverpool English Dictionary traces the term back to scouse slang used in the 1960s. The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang has an entry for “shithouse”, with definitions “an extremely unpleasant individual” and “a coward”.

Our cartoonist looks back at England’s World Cup win over Colombia and how it has been received around the world

• View all of David’s cartoons here

It is hard to walk through Venice, Italy without wondering how the place was built, its architecture rising inexplicably out of the dark water below, or how water, power and internet traverse its myriad canals. The Rialto Bridge is a great place to begin unpacking these mysteries.

Making this bridge possible is a forest of over 12,000 tree trunks burrowing below the surface. Dating back centuries, these foundations are embedded through loose soil below the waterline and into solid clay below, and support over 10,000 tons worth of structure above.

The whole city sits on over 10,000,000 tree trunks. The wood doesn’t rot because the poles are protected by surrounding mud, away from oxygen that would lead to decay.

Meanwhile, bridges like the Rialto serve a function beyond just connecting people — they also help water and utilities flow around the city, without needing to burrow underground or displace space in shallow canals.

The city still faces threats from structural decay, sinking structures and rising water levels, but perhaps the most amazing thing is that it is still standing at all hundreds of years after it was built.

You don’t have to ask permission to make your city more abundant, growing food where once there was none. Sometimes this type of urban hacktivism is obvious to passersby and thus, susceptible to interruption – like planting guerrilla gardens in vacant lots – but sometimes it can fly under the radar, with a much higher shot at success. Guerrilla grafting is one potentially sly means of making cities more hospitable to their inhabitants without relying on official avenues. All it takes is some cuttings from fruit bearing varietals, a few simple tools and a little bit of caretaking.

Why do cities so often plant non-fruit-producing ornamental versions of cherry, pear, plum and other fruit trees? Mostly for the sake of convenience and thrift. They don’t want to have to clean up after trees that might drop a lot of fruit on public surfaces like sidewalks, nor are they thrilled about any extra work harvesting and distributing that fruit might require. Many city governments, like San Francisco, consider grafting a form of vandalism.

But planting and maintaining food-producing plants can be especially crucial in communities that are euphemistically referred to as ‘food deserts,’ i.e. low income neighborhoods where groceries are hard to come by (almost always thanks to systemic inequality.) Many people who live in these areas don’t own cars, don’t have a lot to spend on food and don’t have the time to make special trips out of their way to find healthy options. These spots – rather than wealthier neighborhoods – are prime for grafting.

Tara Hui founded the Guerrilla Grafters collective when her own efforts to alleviate food deserts in the Bay Area were denied by city officials. She figured she’d just do it herself instead, joining up with fellow agricultural activists to transform existing trees into fruit-bearing trees and collect data on the project to prove that it works. The group only splices edible varietals onto ornamentals in areas where volunteers have pledged to monitor and maintain the trees to avoid problems like pests.

Want to give it a shot? You’ll need budding fruit tree cuttings, a sharp knife, ziplock bags, grafting tape, rubber bands and a few other household items. Check out this manual from Guerrilla Grafters to get started. Click to enlarge, or download (in English, German or Spanish) at the Guerrilla Grafters website.

When ‘who do you support?’ is a proxy for ‘who are you?’, the debate can be especially personal for football fans during the World Cup

Clad in an American national team jersey on the eve of the first US-less World Cup since 1986, Karla Cantu pondered who to follow this summer. So did other members of the Laredo chapter of the American Outlaws supporters’ group. They decided to allocate temporary loyalty via lottery. “We can’t come to a consensus. We’re going to do a draw,” she said.

Broadcasters have a commercial incentive to urge bereft Americans to watch Mexico in Russia and the demographic, cultural and geographic ties are obvious. But when “who do you support?” is a proxy for “who are you?”, the debate can be especially personal and complex – especially on a frontier that has become a playing field for nationalistic political games.

Set within the beds of small white Japanese pickup trucks known as ‘kei,’ these gardens are so lush and complex, they look like they’ve been established for many years. In reality, each one had been in place for just a few hours before these photographs were taken. The miniature gardens were created for the annual Kei Truck Garden Contest held by the Japan Federation of Landscape Contractors, held at the Nagai Botanical Garden in Osaka on April 29th and 30th. Thirteen companies participated, each one creating their own interpretation of the theme.

Other than the simple instructions to build a living garden within the truck beds using standard landscaping materials, the contest has very few rules and directives, and the participants are free to design whatever kind of garden strikes their fancy. As this year’s entries show, the results range from formal Japanese tea houses to more American-style gardens complete with decorative wagon wheels. Some integrated furniture, fencing or water features, and one even boasted its own glass-walled pond.

The judging criteria looked for “planning ability, expression power, design, enforcement and consideration of the environment.” First place went to a lush mossy garden entitled “Clear Flow Drifting in Autumn” by Landscaping Co., LTD, which features a dry creek bed and a softly hilly topography (top image), while the indoor/outdoor space with shoji screens called “Nishiki of Autumn Leaves” nabbed second prize and the mysterious “Secret Base of Green Tea” with its cave-like roof structure won third.

The contest is a fun twist on the “portable park” concept sometimes seen in cities like San Francisco, which reclaims parking spots as green space for urban residents. To see more, check out this PDF from the Hanshin branch.

Pâte à choux is a simple dough that's the building block of infinite pastry creations. Learn how to make it, step by step.

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