A Not Quite Great Pumpkin part 6

 

Was at my father's house today to view the Giants game, but I felt like this was something else I could take care of.  When I was there yesterday (lawn mowing), I checked on the pumpkin piece and found it was still a little tacky.  The forecast called for no rain on the weekend, so I left the piece out on the patio table last night, hoping the sun or the constant breeze would finally complete the drying of the surface.  As predicted, no rain, but the pumpkin was still not completely dry when I checked it today.  No color came off on my hands- just a  little bit of stickiness to the surface.  Perhaps that is as good as I can expect any time soon. 

So at halftime, I went out to take care of the next step.  I knew there was a can of clear acrylic spray in their kitchen (why I wasn't sure, but I had seen it sitting on the counter for a while), so I grabbed that.  Instructions showed that it would work like spray paints, so I gave it a proper shake and applied a coat to the front side of the pumpkin.  A few minutes later, that front side was completely dry, so I gave it a second pass.  When that proved dry a few minutes later, I put it down on its face and sprayed the back, since this is plywood and if it rained, that would probably get wet as well, then put it upright and sprayed the edge.  Left it that way for the rest of the game.  At that point I checked it again and found everything dry.  I showed it to my father, who liked the paint job,  so I installed it as it was intended to be seen, on one of the front steps, holding one of the potted chrysanthemums on top.  It seems this project is done.  

Unfortunately, I had no camera today.

A week later (Oct 24th) I was back down at the house to mow the lawn again, and this time I had the camera. 

So you get to see how it looks with the flowers, and I got to see that it survived the rains from early in the week.   That's good to know for the future.