An Expanded Garden

Okay, I know you will be dieing for some pictures but you will just have to wait. It is now dark outside and I will take some pictures tomorrow when it is sunny again. Plus I will have finished some more stuff by then and it will be really great. Now on with the story!!

Our mission today was to get our porch cleaned off from the winter items which got thrown out on the porch for storage. The porch was in sad condition. First the screened door just literally fell apart last fall. it was a cheap wood door and the pressure of all the slamming over the years had loosened all the joints and it fell apart one day. So we have been subject to all the elements plus varmints who want to come on the porch and check out the recycling bin, or the bag of trash tossed out for the time being because someone was too lazy to walk it all the way out to the trash cans (approximately 20 more steps). So we took every thing off the porch, checked out the wood decking floor under the carpet we put down a couple of years ago. All looked great and dry so we vacuumed, vacuumed again, and then shampooed the rug. We then tossed everything we don't want anymore (mainly trash stuffs), scrubbed all the furniture, the ledge going all around the porch and then the posts, trash cans (5 of them), coolers (we found 4 out there!!), and other things that had the green haze of pine pollen on it. Then we started putting things back. Needless to say, it looks great!! Still no door but that will come this week.

Then my husband said, "I have been watching the sun track in the back yard and the space right in front of the porch gets a bunch of sun all day long. Do you want to move the grill and the cushion storage container and make another little vegetable garden right along the front of the porch?"

I didn't have to think for long, as I have been wanting a little more room right here at the house for some more veggies. "yes, yes, yes!" I say.

So we moved the grill and the cinder blocks that it was sitting on. We put the cushion storage box on the porch to also double as more sitting space and we moved some left over wood blocks to make the border. K had brought in some compost from a job he had done and dumped it in our backyard, so we moved the beautiful dark brown compost soil to the new garden bed. I can't wait to start planting in it tomorrow.

Allie and I planted some begonias in another flower bed and I spread mulch around the pine tree which now sits in the middle of the sod we laid last week. We have about 10 more begonia plants and we have a flat of impatiens to plant also. They too will go in tomorrow.

Yesterday we put up our gazebo in the middle of the backyard (pictures to come), and we ate dinner under it last night. It has been sitting under our porch for the past two years and hadn't done anything with it. Now that it is up we wonder why we didn't do this sooner. We put rope lights all around the top and it glows in the darkness. It is really pretty.