AlexH

First I should note that I’ve converted someone to SFG, my grandpa, who has moved into an apartment after owning houses for the past 50 years. He gets a small plot in his apartment building so he’s going to apply the techniques there. I’m sure he’ll convert some other gardeners in his building. My grandma thinks we’re both crazy of course.

I put the tomato plants in on the Thursday before Easter and so far so good. I also bought some conduit and made trellises for the tomatoes. The 1×2’s that I originally bought are too flimsy for tomatoes, so I’m going to double them up for the bean trellis.
The spinach, carrots, and radishes are doing great so far, and they’ll need some thinning this weekend. There is space for more radishes and nasturtiums, so I’m going to plant those which should give me a fairly continuous supply if I rotate through the year. I found some French dwarf marigolds on sale at Save-On so those will get planted as well. There is conflicting information about whether the marigolds that I got are edible, but since I haven’t grown them from seed, who knows what pesticides the nursery used, so I won’t risk it.
I also learned an important lesson about the mini-greenhouses I made with chicken wire. The wind toppled some of them over, and flattened two of the basil seedlings. Ouch. It’s too soon to see if they will recover. I think I will get some dowels or stakes to put in the ground to stop the greenhouses from blowing over.

The radish, carrots, and onions have sprouted and are making great progress.  I’ve thinned the radishes already and will thin the carrots soon.

The next step is to get some slug countermeasures in soon, I’ve been eating lots of pistachios lately so I can put the crushed shells around the perimeter.

The lettuce seedlings are ready to be transplanted, I’ll probably do that tonight.

The rest of the garden is ready for the nursery plants.  The sage, basil, and marigolds will go in this weekend.

It’s been a whirlwind weekend for cars.

• Tuesday night: Someone comes out to test drive the Firebird, he agrees to buy it, but doesn’t put down a deposit.
• Wednesday night: See the ad on Craigslist, email the guy. Arrange for a test drive at lunch the next day. Start researching Miata’s until 1:00am.
• Thursday lunch: Take the car for a test drive. It’s the first time I’ve driven a manual tranny on a real road in a long time. The 3rd to 4th shift was nerve wracking. The car is in great shape, a few parking lot dings here and there, but overall in very good condition.
• Friday lunch: Meet the Miata owner at BCAA to get the report. It looks good except for the brakes (which I knew about) and various engine and tranny seals (which I didn’t know about). I had the $500 deposit in my pocket but I said I’d have to research the prices to fix these issues. Later that afternoon he brough the price down $500 and I agreed to buy it.
• Saturday morning: Drop off the deposit.
• Saturday afternoon: Get a loan and a bank draft. They were more than pleased to help, especially after we mentioned a possible mortgage in the future.
• Saturday 3:00pm: Call the owner and say that we can pick it up! We thought it would take longer to get the loan approved.
• Saturday 4:00pm: The car is mine!
• Sunday morning: Deliver the Firebird to it’s new owner. I forget the AirCare papers.
• Sunday afternoon: Put in the new brake pads. One of the caliper bolts was seized but we cleaned it off and it works fine now. Then we took it for a spin up Burnaby mountain, with the top down. Wow!

The Firebird (along with all of the spare parts) has been sold. It’s gone back to Coquitlam where the new owner is going to put the time and effort into fixing all of the ‘quirks’.

Now I have a new car: