No one burned down your she-shed, Shannon.

Beer in dishes; cheap hideously awful beer. The slugs die happy.

You don't want to see the slugs around Santa Cruz CA and in the PNW.

Where they make hand-blown Christmas tree ornament slugs.

Maryn said:

The fix for slugs eating hostas is easy and cheap. Do one or both of the following, ideally in spring where it's easy to get at the newly emerging plant's base.

• Buy a bag of sand and mound it around the base of the plant. Slugs cannot cross sand. Over the course of a summer, it may wash away, but you probably won't have to renew it more than once or twice a season unless your garden patch routinely floods.
• Six to eight inches from the base of the plant, make a ring of table salt surrounding it. Slugs can't cross it and it kills them if they try. Refresh after every rain, which is a bother.

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The trouble with established gardens is that once the hosta leaves are fully grown, they extend up and over other plants, and the slugs do their the floor-is-lava-(or-salt)-trick and never need to put a pseudopod on the ground. Also, salt is not something to use freely in every garden, it can negatively affect plants.

Maryn said:

I wonder if any other creatures get interested in the beer. I know some mammals and birds deliberately get drunk. We ended up pulling out the pyracantha bushes out front in Arizona because when the berries fermented, the bird activity got ridiculous. I remember thinking one was hurt because it was lying on its back, "flying" on the front walk. That's when it was pointed out to me what the birds were all doing, fighting over the berries and getting birdshit-faced.

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That reminds me, there is a hilarious documentary featuring hung-over baboons and elephants that overindulged in ripe baobabfruits.

I have yet have to see a drunk bird in our garden, but it appears only fruit attracts them, not the alcohol persé. But I suppose it might help to put a cover over the beer, if you live in a place with a lot of rain, that might be preferable anyway.

I can only grow hostas as foundation plantings around my house--the deer leave those alone, but anywhere else, the hostas are toast. I've switched from hostas to daylilies, which they mostly don't bother with. Also, they don't seem to bother bleeding-hearts.

Hmmm, I've always liked the term, Man Cave - If it means getting the ole boy from under my feet, PLEASE, go for it!

I also think She Shed is cute - Perhaps it's the alliteration that I find clever and catchy (?) - Lurve that commercial, by the way.

Oh, and put some of them there Strawberries aside, and I'll make you a big, fat Strawberry Pie when I come visit.

*Waves and blows Kisses to Shakey*

Yikes, I hope your back improves quickly, Shakey. Bummer on the missed paycheck.

Love this thread - and I'm totally in to projects. They are what keep us motivated, energized and optimistic.

Shakey, I just love the idea of your shed. It's the kind of dream project I'd be thrilled to have. There's an old mill cottage that is up for sale here and I would buy in a heartbeat if I had the cash. *sigh* But I did buy two old chairs last year. They were in a truly deplorable condition and only R50 each - that's US$2.77 each. (Don't laugh, our currency is currently chronically devalued right now.... okay, okay, I'll stop.) There are no fabric shops in my town. This is a tragedy of epic proportions for someone who loves sewing and patchwork as much as I do. But, as luck would have it, I had to take my car to a bigger town for repairs and - yay - found a fabric shop (poor selection) and also an upholstery fabric shop (slightly better selection) so I went moggy and bought fabrics.

Then the fabric sat in the bag, right next to chairs, in my spare room, for months. (You know how this happens, right?) However, when they announced the lockdown for the corona virus, I had something of a mild panic. Not over the virus - over the fact that the hardware store would closed. Talk about bulk-buying. I bought a mouse sander (best buy ever!), oak-stain varnish, brushes, turpentine, staples, screws, a new bit for the drill, upholstery tacks and a ton of other stuff. So far, I have removed most of the old fabric (it kind of fell off), sanded down the wooden arms and legs, removed the huge springs in the seats and all the old coir that they were stuffed with. I've made new bottoms for seats out of board and given the wood parts a first coat of varnish. Sheesh. There's nothing like being stuck indoors with two hideous old chairs for getting the DIY juices flowing!

I was just thinking the other day how I don't have the mental power right now to plan big projects but then I realised that apparently I can do projects without realising it's a project if it doesn't feel like it involves much thinking, and apparently that actually works?

In a spur of the moment I started cleaning up the neglected front garden a while ago and now that's all as good as finished I realised that in hindsight it really was a project. But one where the steps were so obvious that it didn't require much planning and material I didn't have available, that it felt like no (mental) trouble at all. So I'm kinda double-pleased with myself: for making the front garden look so much better, and for realising a project in these rather trying times.

Onward to the next project, whether I realise it is one or not!

shakeysix said:

Thanks. Things have been angsty here. I injured my shoulder weeks ago--very painful and, Ford, the county where my chiropractor practices is second highest in coronavirus cases. 516 cases in a county of about 2,000 square miles and less than 34,000 people. So I am not going there. This county has just one doctor and he is overworked in the best of times. In the end I did what my grandmother used to do for her bursitis--don't use the dang arm! Seems to have worked. I can prune and plant small things now. No digging and no big projects.

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Aw, that sucks. Good thing that just keeping it still for a while worked. Just don't try to go too quickly now that it feels a little better. So easy to go overboard and having to go back to square one.

Once the saplings are cut I will poison the stumps and hope that takes care of it. I can buy the stuff at the Lumberyard here. Have to be careful because there are iris and old roses growing in between the piss elms. I promised the lady I bought the lot from not to kill off the old roses because she took great care to nurture them when she lived there. I have fertilized and watered them and they are budded out. Love old fashioned roses.

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Not too keen on having to poison something in your garden. But I reckon digging all the roots out is quite impossible.

Yeay for irisses (I'm a fan) and old roses. Sounds like a lovely place indeed.

GailD said:

Then the fabric sat in the bag, right next to chairs, in my spare room, for months. (You know how this happens, right?) However, when they announced the lockdown for the corona virus, I had something of a mild panic. Not over the virus - over the fact that the hardware store would closed. Talk about bulk-buying. I bought a mouse sander (best buy ever!), oak-stain varnish, brushes, turpentine, staples, screws, a new bit for the drill, upholstery tacks and a ton of other stuff. So far, I have removed most of the old fabric (it kind of fell off), sanded down the wooden arms and legs, removed the huge springs in the seats and all the old coir that they were stuffed with. I've made new bottoms for seats out of board and given the wood parts a first coat of varnish. Sheesh. There's nothing like being stuck indoors with two hideous old chairs for getting the DIY juices flowing!

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At least you had some time to bulk-buy in advance. The first two weeks of our lockdown all I could think of was projects I needed stuff for that I didn't have and therefore couldn't go out an buy it. I swear, that brain of me sometimes...

Sounds like a very satisfying project, though. I sometimes watch a show on the BBC called The Repair Shop and I am always in awe how they manage to restore objects to former glory. They did some chairs too, it must be so much harder than it looks to do!

What will you use for stuffing?

Friendly Frog said:

At least you had some time to bulk-buy in advance. The first two weeks of our lockdown all I could think of was projects I needed stuff for that I didn't have and therefore couldn't go out an buy it. I swear, that brain of me sometimes...

Sounds like a very satisfying project, though. I sometimes watch a show on the BBC called The Repair Shop and I am always in awe how they manage to restore objects to former glory. They did some chairs too, it must be so much harder than it looks to do!

What will you use for stuffing?

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Wanting to do a project and not having the tools or requirements can be so frustrating! That's the worst part of the lockdown - not being able to get stuff. (I haven't mastered this online shopping thing yet.) But I've made a note of that show - The Repair Shop - and I'm going to see if I can find it on the BBC channels that we can get here. Love those types of shows!! Thanks for mentioning it.

I've found re-upholstery to be fairly easy - I use each piece of fabric that I take off, as a template for the new piece and attach it the same way as the previous one was attached. That said, I have never tackled complex pieces of furniture like couches with curved backs or curved sides. For me, it's just a figure-it-out-as-you-go-along kind of thing. (And there have been some disasters. ) I'm using foam for stuffing. I'm something of a... *cough*.... foam hoarder. So, no shortage there.