starting the finish work, a garden disappointment, and a garden surprise

Yesterday I started the finish work on the drowned feather piece. My intention was to use the upright grinder to even out and smooth the edges first but after I got the water hooked up and turned on the valve  between the hose and the wire mesh hose that attaches to the hood over the diamond grinding wheel and squirts water on the grinding wheel to keep the glass from overheating and the glass dust out of the air, water started spewing out from the valve. Upon inspection, the hose bib/valve has a big split in it, apparently another casualty of the deep freeze. Well, that's just great. Unhooked everything and so far Marc hasn't been able to get the damn thing off. 

the valve is the hose bib in the picture, the outside hose attaches to the hose bib with a converter piece that's already been removed

So instead of doing that, I started on the surface with the medium polishing point using the Foredom. 

I've made the first pass over all the rocks. And now I need to go to the plumbing supply and get all new parts so I can hook the water up to my grinder.

Sunday I worked on the drawing some and I'm starting to get it down on paper, made a little mockup of the size and shape of the glass out of foam core and slid it into the stand to see how the shape and proportion worked and I was happy enough with that.

Then I vacuumed the bedroom and swept the in house work room.

And I worked on the drawing more yesterday afternoon, one more element to add in.

This has been a weird year in the garden...a very early heat wave, the deep freeze, and then rain, rain, rain. You might remember I planted 6 morning glory seeds early spring and they grew very sluggishly for months. Well, about a month ago they really took off and here's what the vines looks like now and I have not gotten one single flower. Not one! And here it is August.

And really, nothing is doing well. The orange cosmos aren't even blooming except for a scarce few. Also, I've noticed several shrubs that have dying branches on them. One good surprise though. I had reported the few things that didn't come back after the deep freeze one of them being the star of india gardenia tree/shrub. It had been in a big pot which I didn't empty til May and all the roots inside were mush. Well, apparently it had sent roots into the ground through the bottom of the pot which I did not realize and I noticed a few days ago that it had come back in the same place the pot had been. It's about a foot tall now.