Gardening While Stupid and other Afflictions

If you've previously visited this blog you've seen not just pictures of my gardens but pictures of them in various stages of development and growth. Lots of 'em, in fact. Perhaps too many of them if you're not a gardener.

You may remember that, earlier in the season, I thought birds had graciously planted a couple grapevines for me. After all, my neighbor has a grape arbor. Made sense to me that a few seeds had found their way over to one of my gardens.

I hoisted the vines over trellises, groomed around them, even found a couple old wooden ladders that I thought would make wonderful makeshift arbors. But the more I looked at them the more I had to wonder why the vines hadn't yet yielded even one tiny bunch of grapes when there were so many perfectly round, luscious-looking bunches dangling from my neighbors' tidy arbor.

This afternoon, as I was mindlessly painting an old chair and pondering whether to post my question on one of HGTV's garden forums, Barbara (my neighbor) suddenly appeared bearing a goodly start of wisteria and an equally healthy rooting from a golden trumpet vine. (Let me insert here, by the way, that she was not an innocent party in identifying my grapevines.)

I excitedly accepted the plants as I do anything that has roots and is legal, plantlover that I am.

Just as she was walking away and was a few safe paces out of my reach she paused, half-turned and commented over her shoulder, "Oh, I almost forgot to tell you - when I was out walking yesterday, I saw some of those vines that we thought were grapevines. They were growing wild on Dick and Kathy's fence and he was out spraying weedkiller on them. I'd take them up if I were you."

I'm in the process of reworking those now bare areas of the garden.

Other projects... Looks pretty good in the top picture, huh? Take a closer look and you'll see this massive hole in the saddle and an even massive-r hole (this from an English major) under the belly. There are small holes in the body of the horse, the pole is rusty and the wood stand is extremely dry. It's a project for (much) later and will probably end up in one of our shops when finished.

My husband found this old chair atop a trash heap. I let it sit for several days before deciding to turn it into two projects. The back got sawed off, as you see in the first photo. Then I decided to saw off the seat part (not shown in these photos). The legs were missing a couple support spindles so I fit some dowel rods in those places. I cut a piece of plywood to fit into an old picture frame and attached it to the bottom spindles where the seat used to be. It now has a fresh coat of paint and is waiting for me to mosaic the top. It should make a cute little side table. I'll decide what to do with the seat and the spindled back later. (Have you noticed that I have quite a few projects saved for "later"?)

Here's one that I started, then put on "hold". I do that sometimes, start a project then get either distracted or decide that I need to re-think it before continuing. This is a dresser that once belonged to my mother-in-law. It has an attached mirror that is in another part of the workshop, safely wrapped in a heavy moving blanket.

I thought it would be an easy task, that it just needed some basic cleaning and painting. But the damage to the top is more extensive than I thought. I sanded it, thinking it would smooth right out but the veneer (I hadn't realized it even had a veneer top) started to peel. I applied some wood putty to it and attempted to smooth-sand it but I don't like the way it's looking. So it's on hold while I re-think it.

Here's a little bench I made from the remains of an old kitchen bench and the fronts of two dresser drawers. I fastened the drawer fronts to the base, painted the whole thing and mosaic'd the seat.

.

I thought was finished but I've since decided it needs a design on the back. I'll either stencil something or draw something freehand.

The seat is narrow, just large enough for a child or to hold some potted plants. Okay, so an adult with a rear end smaller than mine could probably sit comfortably here, too.

It's almost 11:00PM here in East Tennessee; the time has gotten away from me again and I still have tools to put away. Thanks for stopping in!