And just 14 short months later...

...and I've got this far with the chair. Actually, there is a little bit of progress you can't see - I've also borrowed a staplegun from my friend Jane. The project is basically done. All I have to do now is use the original upholstery pieces as patterns for the new material, staple it on very neatly, figure out how to cover the back of the back panel, which doesn't have anything to staple to, find on the internet and order decorative tacks, then use said tacks to cover all the stapling.

I have a paper due on Thursday, but once that's done maybe I'll make a move on the chair. I really should, since I'd like to have it done in under two years and there are only 10 months left to go...

I also have some gardening projects lined up. At some point during the winter all my basil plants died. I was disgusted with them, and put them outside on the patio so I wouldn't have to look at them all brown and sticklike. This tough love approach actually worked with a clematis that's recently put out new leaves, but the basil just died, so I got a little new one at the grocery store yesterday, along with an assorted herb 6-pack and I need to repot them all. I've also got some begonia bulbs or seeds or pips or whatever they're called, and some tomato and parsnip seeds. Last year's tomato plants have pretty much all died, except one that has just recently produced two tomatoes (currently .5 in and .75 in diameter, respectively), which if they ever ripen will be the only fruit I got out of that crop. I'm going to try again this year and be very diligent about pinching shoots, fertilising, making sure the plants get enough sun, leaving them outside to be pollinated, and all that gardenerly stuff. I'm also going to use potting soil rather than dirt I dug up from the back yard, which I'm confident will make a big difference.

So far in the garden we've done some weeding and I planted some bulbs. I also decided to spruce up the three hanging planters on our garden wall since you can see them from the kitchen window and they were empty except for a dead geranium, some moss, and a handful of scraggly looking weeds. One of our challenges in gardening is that we have no idea what most of the plants are. Our neighbour Rocco, who is a retired gardner, seems to have only two categories of plants - "pretty flowers" or "rubbish". By his standards, most of the stuff in our garden is rubbish. So I took some things that I'm pretty sure are weeds but have pretty flowers on them at the moment and transplanted them into the planters. Pretty nice for weeds, huh?