Okay, so we never got the really bad road conditions that were predicted last week, so there’s only the one video post today. I guess around 2h00 or 3h00 the morning after I shot the video there was some ice rain but not enough to be too concerned about. We did get the negative temps and ground frost, and a couple of days after that we had a winter storm warning but nothing ever came of that either. I was kinda looking forward to it too because since I can’t plant anything yet, I was at least hoping for a more interesting video production. No luck though. I thought it was gonna happen while I was out running the roads because just as I was on my way back from doing a bit of groceries on Thursday, something kicked up that looked blizzard like, but by the time I got back in the house literally five minutes later, it had stopped. I should rig up the video camera to record while I’m driving.
The seedling news is a bit of good and bad. The bad news is all of the cantaloupe seedlings have gone to a better place, and nothing has come up where I planted new ones. Oh . . . wait . . . I guess I shouldn’t say nothing; there’s some kind of mushroomy looking thing that has popped up in the cantaloupe pots and in one of the broccoli pots. I have no clue what it is. I still have a couple of straggly broccoli plants from the first planting and the new ones are shooting up well. But I guess that doesn’t really mean anything given the last batch got off to a good start, and look what happened there. The tomatoes look good too and the newest seeds I planted – the brandy wine reds – are coming up. I really hope I’ll be able to get those going outside. I still think I’m going to have to buy some tomato plants though to supplement my own. The peppers are moving at a slow but steady pace, but I know that peppers are slow growers anyway. My herb planters look great and the rosemary is finally showing a couple of shoots. (I don’t have recent pics of that though) The lemon and thai basil and I think the chervil are the ones doing the best so far.
There’s no change in the garden itself. I’m still waiting to get the dirt in from the landscapers. I don’t know, it looks to me like they’re ready, but no one’s ever there. My Honey started putting out the backyard wildlife, and he’s thinking on replacing the well that he usually puts out with a new water feature. I’m hoping for something stone.
In the backyard craft dept. my bucket ashtrays are quite a hit. My Mum and my sister in law
both want one, and so I've got another one base coated. Just a tip for anyone who might want to do one of these bucket ashtrays: On the first one I base coated with Folk Art outdoor paint, but I find it goes a lot easier and faster to hang the bucket on the clothes line and use an indoor / outdoor spray paint like Krylon, and use the Folk Art Outdoor paint for the actual brush stroke work. It's also more cost effective because the Folk Art comes in such little bottles, you can use a lot base coating something the size of those buckets.
I’m also putting together one of those tipsy clay pot planters for MIL for her birthday tomorrow. The clay pots were painted with a technique I learned from Plaid online where you paint the rims black, then randomly apply a wax candle to it and paint over top with colours of your choosing. Then, take some sand paper to remove the top colour and where the wax was applied the black shows through. It gives it a kind of scuffed up look. The bottom part of the pots are painted with chalkboard paint so you can write what kind of plant you have growing in the pot. I’ve done the painting but I haven’t put it together yet. I hope I’m able to get it to work, because I bought a steel rod that wasn’t threaded. My Honey says I should have gotten a threaded one so I can put a nut under each pot for support. I went back to get the threaded one, but they didn’t have nuts the size I needed for the rod and they didn’t have rods the size of the nuts they had; go figure.
There’s no change in the garden itself. I’m still waiting to get the dirt in from the landscapers. I don’t know, it looks to me like they’re ready, but no one’s ever there. My Honey started putting out the backyard wildlife, and he’s thinking on replacing the well that he usually puts out with a new water feature. I’m hoping for something stone.
In the backyard craft dept. my bucket ashtrays are quite a hit. My Mum and my sister in law
both want one, and so I've got another one base coated. Just a tip for anyone who might want to do one of these bucket ashtrays: On the first one I base coated with Folk Art outdoor paint, but I find it goes a lot easier and faster to hang the bucket on the clothes line and use an indoor / outdoor spray paint like Krylon, and use the Folk Art Outdoor paint for the actual brush stroke work. It's also more cost effective because the Folk Art comes in such little bottles, you can use a lot base coating something the size of those buckets.
I’m also putting together one of those tipsy clay pot planters for MIL for her birthday tomorrow. The clay pots were painted with a technique I learned from Plaid online where you paint the rims black, then randomly apply a wax candle to it and paint over top with colours of your choosing. Then, take some sand paper to remove the top colour and where the wax was applied the black shows through. It gives it a kind of scuffed up look. The bottom part of the pots are painted with chalkboard paint so you can write what kind of plant you have growing in the pot. I’ve done the painting but I haven’t put it together yet. I hope I’m able to get it to work, because I bought a steel rod that wasn’t threaded. My Honey says I should have gotten a threaded one so I can put a nut under each pot for support. I went back to get the threaded one, but they didn’t have nuts the size I needed for the rod and they didn’t have rods the size of the nuts they had; go figure. 
