Going Out With A Bloom

That's the title of this year's spring Show and Sale in the Horticulture Department. Coming up soon - the show runs from the 21-31 March. The second-year students are the organizers, and have been growing all sorts of things in the greenhouse in preparation. They've also been deciding what they want for wood and stone accessories, which our year gets to build.

Construction class this week, part of the class was in the wood-shop making Adirondack chairs. The rest of us were playing with stone - my group being on pillar-building again. Last time the concept was 'think outside the box'. This time, we were told, 'something formal, modern, modular'. We ended up with 4 variations on a theme:

(If you can't tell scale, each of those is about 32" high and the caps are 28" across and bloody heavy.)

So now we have to draw up scale plans of the pillars, and the ones that the second-years like best (from all the construction classes) will get rebuilt at the entrance to the building, to welcome visitors to the show.

In other hort news, I've got a co-op placement! Come April at some point, you will be able to find me out at the Canadian Tire in Orleans, in their Garden Centre. I'll be taking care of the plants, advising customers with questions, dealing with orders and deliveries of plants, putting together planters, and planning seminars on various gardening topics that might be of interest to people. Lots to learn and teach, and I think it'll be pretty exciting! The woman who came to do the interview was really great to talk to - fibre interests as well, and very enthusiastic. We talked so much that I was almost late getting back to class; neither of us thought to check the time until we'd been there an hour. I figure that's a pretty good sign!

Here and There

Whoops, disappeared for a while there. Been a busy week - Ex and Sale, group project for English, general studying and catching up...

We had a really nice weekend for the Ex and Sale, at least. A bit chilly, but not raining. I was really glad I didn't have to lug my stuff on and off the bus in the rain. And the colder weather makes people think of Christmas. I don't know if the attendance was as high as last year, but there were always people wandering around to booths and displays, demoing going on, and a buzz of conversation.

I made enough to make it worth coming back next year, for sure, and since most of the finished work went fast, I think that will be something to concentrate more on. I spent most of the time I wasn't talking to people in knitting and reciting plant names for this week's quizzes.

The cold weather coming in also means we need to get our outdoor work finished at school. I noticed when I was shoveling stone dust today that it was starting to freeze into chunks. But the walkway is progressing well, and we should hopefully have it finished in a week or so. Besides hauling stone dust today, I got to use the Core Cutter (the saw for the brick), help level stone dust, and lay brick. Can't you just see the frantic activity as we work? Like our uniform? Hort Couture, if ever there was. The big balding dude at right in one pic is our teacher, and he is very good at bellowing.

Yesterday I was helping with getting one of the water features cleaned up for winter, so between pond scum and stone dust, my pants and gloves have some pretty interesting residue this week!

One final thing the cold weather is bringing out, and that is the Christmas ads in flyers. I got the Canadian Tire one today. There seems to be a tacky tropical decorating trend I missed. Not only are there normal fake Christmas trees, but there are also pre-lit fake palm trees - and a lit pink flamingo and tinsel palm tree for the front yard. Oi. As if the normal pink plastic flamingos weren't enough!