Feeling Blue

Well, the door is feeling blue, I guess. It's certainly looking blue now.

A door! This is the front door with the very pretty blue on it. The surface is a bit rough right now, but the coverage is pretty decent.

This is the top of the door and you can see the texture here. This is a product of regular brushes, foam brushes, foam rollers, furry rollers and who knows what all else. We had a bit of a cotton storm the other day while I was painting so there's a fair bit of cotton stuck in my paint as well. This texture isn't really working for me, so I have to figure out something else to do about it. I'm thinking sanding.

Smoother, yes. You can't feel it because this blog isn't a holodeck, but it's now pretty darned smooth. I would even say "glassy" if asked to describe it. Unfortunately, the sheen is now more matte than semi-gloss and the color is slightly uneven. I'm not entirely sure what to do about this, unfortunately. I can get the whole surface very smooth and then do another top coat of the paint and just leave it be after that, but the chances of me still having some kind of brush marks on it are pretty much 100%. I can also get the whole thing smooth and then coat it with some kind of semi-gloss varnish to even out the sheen and protect the paint, but I don't know how that would affect the color. Anyone with any ideas, please let me know what you suggest.

This is our little under-tree garden in the front yard. The ivy looks strong but everything else seems to be having a rough time. I think we underestimated the amount of sun that would hit these guys and they're all very unhappy with us. We may have to dig them up and move them somewhere shady (maybe closer to the house?) and replace them with some sun-loving plants. It's going to be a tricky time no matter what, so I'll keep you posted on what we end up doing.

This picture's a bit overexposed, but hopefully you can see the important bits. We now have two live columbine plants and one dead one. The live ones seem to be doing pretty well, actually. I'm thinking rather seriously of transferring each into their own pot so they have a bit more breathing room. Right now, they look like they're ready to bloom a bit more. The thing I don't think you can see is the cotton stuck all over them. There's cotton all over everything in the world right now. It's just blowing around, collecting in piles, sticking to spider webs (and I keep finding more giant webs in our yard) and generally making a nuisance of itself. I'm hoping that will lessen as we get farther from spring.

I'm still having issues with the sprinkler system, too. I thought I had figured it out but the thing is being a pain in the butt. No matter how I set it, it wants to be a free spirit and water whenever it feels like it. Last night at about 7:30 I was looking out the window and noticed that the back sprinklers were on. "Odd," I said to myself. "I don't think it's 5:00 AM." Turns out it totally wasn't, but the sprinkler system Does. Not. Care. It will sprinkle because that's what it does. I took a picture of the panel at every spot on the dial and I won't pester you with such things, but I figured it might be helpful for me if I ever get hold of someone at Rain Bird and need to show them my settings. Here's one shot of it just so you feel like you're really there:

Stupid thing.

Okay, that's all I have for now. Thanks for reading!