Yes, the ballast is indeed sieved cat litter courtesy of Clive and his long suffering cats (unused, should you ask, despite the similar later colouration we applied!)
The latest ballast I applied last Saturday at our regular working session turned out to swell up more than our previous ballast. Clive later checked & found out the new packet advertised it's easy clumping qualities. Dooh!! We're desperately trying to find some of the old formula cat litter instead. You'd think the supermarket would have asked us before changing to a new formula! Anyway, after much careful removal of wet over swollen ballast & later scraping of dried ballast this Wednesday, it was decided that the ballast can stay but will need more patient work (hopefully with some use of the older ballast/litter.
As for the scenery, we wanted to get some longer static straw coloured dried grass. I went to our 'local' DCC supplies only to find out that the 12mm long Noch straw colour had sold out. We still hope to use this soon to represent the distinctive longest straw dried grass that you often see around embankments etc -think it is last year's long grass that has died.
Allan has done the allotment using Nock and Greenscene products, pigeon loft from Skytrex I believe, pigeons & droppings from I know not where, Brambles from rubberised horsehair , hairspray & ground foam scatter, I found the runner bean sticks on a hogweed type of plant while waiting for son at our municipal golf course (as you do!)
I've just made some runner bean plants for Allan to try out using painted bendy thinnest fuse wire, pva & foam scatter.
Greenscenes supply packs of real dried plant stems. I
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