Garden Update 5 2015

Time has marched on!

I think the peppers are very happy in there new bed. They seem to be doing well and growing tall. I thank the rain we've had and the cooler temperatures for being so kind to the baby plants. If it was too hot and there was too much sun, they might have been burned  and cooked in the ground! They love the sun but they need some over cast days too. The rain has been my friend. I have noticed some bug nibbles, but not enough to pull out the  pesticide - yet. So far so good. I think they are doing better here than they did in the other garden because they don't have to compete with the taller, faster growing  tomatoes for light. In this space the only competition they have is with the leeks and its really no contest.

I thought I planted a lot of leeks, but I either didn't or there has all ready been some bad days. I've never tried to plant onions before and if this doesn't work I'm going to leave it to the people who know what they are doing - like Alphagal, who can plant and harvest onions successfully.

The tomato's! They are doing very well! The rain has been very very good to them. They are all growing, even a little puny plant that I almost threw out when I was planting because it was  hardly an entire plant, it was mostly just roots and a shoot. That was all it needed! Its still very small and looks  a dwarf next to the other, taller plants but its getting there.

The taller plants are also further along with their development, I have flowers! It sreally early for these buds and they will most likely fall off, but it s start and the real bloms with show up when the plants are a little more mature.

The corn is growing well. It doesn't seem to mind being in containers as yet. I keep them fertilized with alfalfa pellets and coffee grounds.

The blueberry bush I decided to let live seems to be living the good life. I would be good if I even got some of those berries before the birds take them all. Hopefully they will actually A) ripen, and B) not get eaten by birds.  I have tried using bird netting but it also served as Diana Netting and it was more trouble then it was worth.

This is this years Elephant Ear. I moved it out of the more direct sunlight into the more indirect sunlight and I think it is happier.

My long awaited Huneysuckle! I tried and tried to get a huneysuckle plant to take and I finally got a a cutting to grow! I love the scent of honeysuckle and I really hope this does what the plant is supposed to do, I can cut it back as necessary but I really like huneysuckle and it will look great around my door as it matures and gets more flowery.

 My door. Clearly, there is work to be done but the plant is reaching over and meeting up with the Non-Blooming Ever honeysuckle variety I bought at the store, hopefully it will take over and be nice.

Every year I say I'm going to take this out and every year it just saves it self.

Last years Elephant Ear. It is not a happy plant. It was gorgeous last year but its not very interested in growing and developing this year.

 The rose plant. I also always say that this is its last year and it always fools me and comes back. I really do want to get a better plant, this one is really aging out. It makes very pretty flowers though and it has a lovely scent.

Monday

Almost there. Almost.  I am pleased with how this turned out. Of course the first thing I noticed after I brought it in was that I did not paint under the lazy Susan! I didn't realize that it was that much larger than the table top. I thought they matched. Oh well, it'll get done at some point. I added some birds but only a very conservative number of hem. Still, birds though.

Before

After

And what of the bookcase?

I am not pleased with this.

The paint peeled off is sheets. I went to remove the tape and things went very wrong after that.

I don't know what happened. I can't imagine that the cheap cardboard book shelf unit would be painted with oil paint? I don't know if I painted under bad circumstance, if it was too humid or too warm or what exactly happened but it happened and the case isn't painted anymore. It may be a sign and it maybe won't get painted, the other bookcase is not painted and I'm okay with it but I don't like being thwarted! Maybe I'll go out and find a real wooden book case and I'll paint it out and it will look nice and the paint won't peel off in sheets. Damn it. Or not, I'll just deal with it,but I'll also deal with it sitting there and mocking me. Sigh.

Saturday and Sunday

Paint, Paint, Paint, go-shopping, Paint, Paint. Shake your brushes out, shake your brushes out.... Also, it rained, a terrific way to raise the level of difficulty of painting outdoors.

This is what we have so far.

Pictured : Lazy Susan the TV sits on - note that it is two different colors, lots of OCD futzing here. I have entertained painting the edges in contrasting colors because it would look really neat but I decided that people in hell want water too, the table the TV sits on , and a book shelf that now lives in the dinning room that needed to mirror the same treatment as the book cases in the living room. Because, of course it does!. It is however much more cardboard than the built on book cases. I was shocked and I put this together. Card Board, not press board, not MDF, the back wall that I painted is Pure D 100% cardboard.

Since this was taken they have all gotten a second coat and the table has been put back on its feet. I flipped it over to get the bottom parts painted as thoroughly as the top parts and because its not done until it is all done!. I am so my fathers daughter.

Also raining.

I took a break from the painting and went shopping, I was gifted with a couple of coupons from Broskey and Alphagal and I got the curtains for the dining room and the hardware for the curtains in the living room.

 This whole widely blown out of proportion project may be over soon.

Speaking of After and "over", I finished the wooden side table!!

I did remove all but one of the birds on the front face, it looks better without them, I added them to the tip and sides. It is GRAY. I know it looks white, it was very dark to start out and I think that is the problem. It looks lovely.

Friday Cat Blogging

Friday

Weekend Projects

1. TV table gets its turn under the brush
2. Small book case gets tarted up
3.Vine over front door gets trimmed up and woven into place
4. Shop for dining room curtains?
4a. Shop for seat pads for dinning room chairs.
5. Continue to clean out downstairs bedroom
6. Laundry


With a great deal of brute strength, I moved the table back into the room and got it back where it belongs

Floor Show

In further pursuit of my new obsession with the interior of my house, I got a couple of on special 5x7, discounted, carpets are Target. So much cheaper than buying a big carpet, small carpets = small price.

My last carpet came from a yard sale. It was a remnant from a hotel, and at the time it was perfect, like a gift from above. And then, eight or so years later, I went to Target and there was another gift.

Old carpet needed to go, and after it was rolled up,  I saw that the carpet had left a little bit of a , shadow, a dusty, icky shadow.  I knew it was there, but it also needed to go. So I made it go. I swept  and vacuumed and moped with hardwood floor cleaner. And mopped, and mopped.

Before

Kind of blah, dusty, yucky. In need of attention.  I should have been paying attention to it, they are nice hardwood floors that should be taken care of like they were years ago. They looked better years ago after I took the carpet up when I moved in. Nice floors like these deserve to be treated better than I have. But here I am and here they are and  I'm going to put another carpet down and hope it protects the floor until I can wax it or put a sealer down or whatever it is that people to to care for their hardwood floors.

But in the meantime, I cleaned it up.

During

After

It looks much better, there is a weird patch that I don't know what happened to, but over all, it still looks good and I'm happy with it. I'll let it sit over night and tomorrow after work, I'll put the carpets down and put the table and chairs back and there we go. I couldn't wait!

When I'm rich

I'll turn that into a screened porch. I'll add French doors where that window is. It will be lovely and the neighbors won't mind me perched outside their window.

The Work after Work

What I did after work instead of writing an entry :

1. Mowed the back yard
2. Mowed the front yard
3. Pulled out the irrigation timer from the basement and set it
3b - Pulled out a hose from the basement to service the timer
4. Pulled out pulled out another #$%^& timer from the basement
5. Threw away the !@#$% dry rotted hose
5a. Pulled another ^&%$ hose out of the basement
5b- Reset the sprinkler for optimum coverage
6.Brought the  very heavy end table into the house
7. Stripped my bed
8. Stripped the dogs bed
9. Laundered the bedding
10.Remade my bed
11. Remade the dogs bed
12. Put away a lot of laundry
13. Continued the bedroom clean out
14. Got KFC for dinner.
15. Flea and Tick treated the dog
16. Took a shower

From Storage Room to Bed Room

This is what I started with this afternoon

A depressing mess.


A couple of hours later and multiple trips upstairs and into the attic

We have floor! And most of what is there is waiting to go back up on a wall or waiting to be re-shelved  or waiting to be given to Goodwill. Its still a depressing mess, but its a mess in process.

I put a lot of stuff back on shelves - and now I'm feeling ambivalent about having anything back on the shelves! I liked it better before, when they were empty. I'm going to need to get over that, shelves are meant to to hold things and I cut way, way back on the things that are being held. I still have some editing though, and I am going to have to put something on the mantle piece at some point and I need to get a plan about what is going to hang over it as well. I have some ideas, I have some thoughts. I'm trying to make them gel. Its messy.

I also went to Wallyworld, because I pretty much have to go every day or so because reasons. They had a sale on dog collars and I got Rocket a new one for summer since he rolled in sewage with his winter collar. This one, like that one, was $3.50. We can afford a wardrobe change.

I kind of like it, but at the same time, I think its a little "puppy" for him. He's a full grown man-dog now and I'm not sure how I feel about the message this sends, but they didn't have anything that was both manly (where were all these size giagantor pink collars when Daisy was in the market for big pink collars? Poor Daisy, she was a plus sized doggy fashionista before her time) and on sale. I love the color though.


(I was going to post what I thought was the finished version of the side table, I was being very OCD with ear swabs dabbing out stray bits of color for way too long when I came home from work today. It was nice, I thought, but it could have been anyone's painted out side table. I went looking around and found a way to make it My painted out side table. There will be a big reveal)

Weekend Projects 2

Well.  I didn't get all the tables taken care of. I might have, if I had set an alarm and got up early and worked, worked, worked all day - But I didn't do that because I was tired and I slept late on Saturday and so didn't get properly started until 11:30am. I'm the boss of this project and we start when I am ready to start. I was ready at 11:30am.

The metal table looked like it would be "easy" so I started there. It was filthy from the painters so I gave it a bath.

I then dried it and took it outside.

And painted and painted and painted some more. It looked easy enough, but it was a time suck. All those individual pieces of metal had to be painted individually, top and bottom and there were many individual piece of metal.But I got it done

It has no pink. I couldn't decide what was going to be pink, so nothing was pink. I think that the top most lip is going to turn pink by next weekend.

The second player was one I was dreading a little. A lot. It wasn't pretty to start off with and I was afraid that frosting it wasn't going to do much for it, except make it fade into the wall. Which would be fine. But its a lot of work just to make it go away. I want it to have something more, something novel.

So, I painted the exterior. A lot of work, the wood wasn't as smooth as it looked and I ended up with a couple of places I couldn't sand out. I decided to go with the idea that wood is a natural thing and natural things have lived and living leaves a mark.

It is GRAY. It looks white, but its gray.I promise.

Moving on to the interior. More fun than the exterior because I can't get close enough to really obsess over the job.

Pretty good. The green is painters tape.

I also painted out the hardware

With spray paint, left over from my last adventure in table painting.

I wouldn't call myself a perfectionist. I am a "close enough for government work" kind of gal. And then I painted something with contrasting colors! Everything makes me crazy! I don't know how many times I thought I was done and then saw that I was most certainly not done. For example

There is pink In my gray! I'm going to have to go back with a ear swab to fix that. I also see the drips but I have to let go of the drips.I may have fixed those all ready. I've done a lot of "fixing". They are everywhere and I got as many as I could. It looks good from a distance

I think it needs some of the pink on the exterior. Maybe around the base? I like that idea because it would have nowhere to drip, I hate it when I get pink paint drips. Its very disturbing.

I did not get to the TV table, that's going to wait until next weekend. Its going to take hours. The TV people LIE about how long it takes to get projects done "Oh, we'll just paint those out!" and the next thing you know, Boom! There they are, flawless and gorgeous. Thank God I found the right china cabinet because painted one of those out would take  me weeks and make me insane. I did find the perfect orange for the dining room though and after the TV table, I'm going to paint the back wall of the book case that lives in there so its like the book case in the living room,  an orangey coral instead of a hot pink. It will look fabulous and bring the orange up from the floor.