random thoughts – Day 2,299 (Wednesday) – fern fun

There was a kitchen tidy-up this morning and a couple containers were brought out to the recycle bin. They had been rinsed last night and set to dry and were ready for the next stop. Standing on the back door landing shortly after 10 a.m. I realized it wasn’t as hot as I had imagined it to be and the back of the house was still in deep morning shade. The oil tank enclosure idea had baked sufficiently and the paint was bought days ago, so I grabbed my yard work shoes and gloves and made for the yard.

Giant back yard ferns.

Something had trampled some of the giant ferns in the clump near the shed and they were laying sideways along the ground, making it easy to choose some for the project. Three large fronds were clipped and brought over by the oil tank enclosure with the spray paint cans.

Fern fronds were held against the sides of the enclosure with one gloved hand and outlined with either moss or fossil colored spray paint with the other hand. There was spraying, and stepping back to decide where to put the next outline and pretty soon it was done. It was peaceful, meditative work, and based on the absence of new paint on my sneakers, less messy than when I used a similar process on a deck umbrella a bunch of years ago. Maybe I’m getting better at paint control.

Done!

By 11:15, and before it became hella-hot, I was done and had returned to the confines of the house to resume chugging water. And just like that, a project was knocked off the house to-do list. The total cost was $26 and around two hours. It was enjoyable enough that I may start painting the shed right away. I have a picture of the siding color chip and can probably get paint in a close enough color to get a jump on it soon instead of waiting to take a siding scrap to the store.

Working on the shed will keep my mind off all the planting that it would be dumb to do before the siding is installed because it would be trampled. The shed will involve some scraping and then brush work, and maybe a spray paint layer afterwards if I’m feeling extra about it and recreate the fern effect done on the oil tank enclosure. We’ll see.