As the Garden Grows

What's blooming today?


Show me your banana photo contest – Win free hosting

by

I’ve been asked to hold a photo competition!

The photo contest is being provided by Banana Hosting and the contest winner will win a year of free hosting at Banana Hosting. The hosting plan can be any Banana XL plan (Unix or Windows) worth $172.80.

The Details:

I’m going to make this photo contest really simple.

Submit a photo of a Banana in action.

By this I mean doing something like driving a car, dancing at a party, trying to pick up another banana at a night club, swimming, doing a high jump … anything like that. Use your imagination but keep it PG.

This is your chance to be creative. Show me your sense of humor.

All submissions must be “Family Safe” entries. No photos of bananas getting hurt, or maimed and nothing sexual. Just nice fun photos.

The contest will begin as of today and will run until Midnight Eastern Standard Time, Friday April, 6th, 2007. I’d like to have at least 10 entries by the time the contest closes. If I don’t have 10 entries by Friday April 6th, I will extend the contest for another week or until I have at least 10 entries.

I know my readers enjoy photography so I hope getting the minimum amount of entries won’t be a problem.

How to submit your photos:

  1. If you have a blog or website you may post your “Show me your Banana” photo contest entry on your site – however, you must leave a link in the comment section of this post to the page or post on this site so that I can see your entry easily.
  2. If you have a Flickr or free photo hosting account (Photobucket etc) You can leave a comment with a link to your photo entry in this post.
  3. No website or free photo host? No problem. Just send me an email with your photo entry attached. I’ll post the photo for you. My email is dragonden AT rogers DOT com.

Please submit photos of good quality. Only photos will be accepted. Please do not submit drawings, artwork or CGI entries.

I will choose the contest winner at my own digression. I will be judging the contest for most creative and likely most humorous photo. So please use your imagination!

This is a fantastic prize.

If any of you are currently using a free hosting such as blogspot, wordpress.com, xanga or any of the others now is your opportunity to start a new site of your very own. Become a domain owner and have so much more freedom as to how you run your website. I can’t begin to tell you how much nicer it was when I finally started to host my websites on my own. Now you can too – and free for a whole year!

Note: If you make an entry on your own site for the photo contest you might want to mention that www.bananahosting.com is the creator this great photo contest here on As the Garden Grows.

Send your entries in as soon as possible. I’m eager to see how creative you can be!






Garden puttering …

by

I can’t believe how nice the weather has become. It’s been quite warm here in Toronto this week. Well the last few days were. Todays a little cooler at only 9 Celsius, but it did reach 19 c (66.2 F) yesterday I believe.

I didn’t get outside to do anything with the garden yet, but Chris spent some time outside on Monday. Raking the grass and picking up debris that had littered the lawn and garden beds over the winter. It’s amazing how many little scraps of paper etc get stuck in plants and on the lawn over the winter months when you live on a busy and windy street.

I think I keep waiting to feel better to get outside, but I think if I actually went outside and started puttering around in the garden the act of being out there doing stuff would make me feel better.

Maybe I will go out there and putter around for a bit. I’ll bring my pruners out. I don’t think I’ll prune the roses yet, but certainly I can begin to cut down and remove some stems from the dead top growth of the perennials.

Have any of you started to work on your garden now that Spring has arrived? If you have, what plants are beginning to grow?

Planning our basement and bathroom renovation

by

I have a list in my head of all the renovations and upgrades that I’d like to do to this house. As I’ve said before we must finish our living room first before we begin any new work on the house. The next big job that we’ll tackle will either be the kitchen or the basement.

I’m leaning more toward renovating the basement first since we really don’t use the space down there at all except for practical purposes such as storage, and laundry. Our second bathroom happens to be in the basement as well.

The former home owners seem to have just thrown together this extra bathroom. It has the tiniest shower stall that I’ve ever seen, and there’s no sink in the bathroom. Oh yes, you can wash your hands, but you must leave the bathroom and walk around the corner to a utility sink that is near the washing machine.

I can live with this. I mean it’s just nice to have a second bathroom in the house. However, when we do get around to renovating the basement that bathroom is going to be turned into something really nice.

I’ve been looking at the various showers and bathroom accessories over at www.Taps4Less a site that is quickly becoming known as the best online shower shop.They have an amazing assortment of everything you could possibly need when it comes to renovating or upgrading your bathroom. You can purchase new taps, bathroom accessories, bathroom furniture, cabinets, tubs, shower enclosures and even shower valves at Taps4less.com. If you’re thinking of redoing a bathroom have a look at the site.

If we were going to go all out I think it would be really cool to have a shower that had chrome taps and accessories as well as one of those multihead showers. You know the ones I mean. They have 7 or 8 different shower heads that spray you at different angles. I’m sorry to say that I’ve never tried one of those types of showers, but I’ve heard from others that have that it’s a fantastic showering experience.

Chris has always wanted us to have a hottub. I’ve thought about opening up the back end of our basement so that there would be a door and perhaps stairway that goes out to our backyard. A hottub might fit nicely just under what we now use as a built in storage area under the enclosed back porch. Still, I’m not sure that would work out all that well. Perhaps Chris would settle for a sauna instead?

It would be idea to have a bathtub as well as a shower in the basement. It’s just a bonus to have both I think. So I’ve also spent some time looking at the various shower bath designs. A bathtub with whirlpool jets would be nice.

Well, as you can see I’m still in the dream/planning stage of our basement and bathroom renovation. I guess we’re still in the saving money for the renovation stage as well. Renovations aren’t cheap, but you do save a lot of money when you do things yourself. Well, only if you do them properly.

Meta