The Patio Project

This is what it looked like on our front lawn this morning.  Like a garage sale.  Other than the wheelbarrow and the tools in it, ALL of this stuff had been on the front patio.  Actually there had been more than this.  Lots of pots of dead plants.  Probably my greatest success at gardening is buying plants, not getting them planted, and them dying of neglect.   The patio collection also included a couple of wheelchairs.......don't ask. Thankfully probably the only people to have seen it were Meredith and David.  Tidy people we are not.  

Last week I had weeded the flower bed and rockery at the front of the house.  I'm trying to keep it decent after I went to a lot of work last year to resuscitate it after years of neglect.   So to keep up with the tidy garden, I started cleaning up the dead pots on the patio. Here's a few that were not dead.  The blue pottery planter is a cheery little dose of Spring and Easter.  The succulent planter is slated to be divided up.

You know how you start what seems to be a simple job, and then one thing leads to another and you end up doing waaaay more work than you had planned on.

The little wall between the garden and the patio had originally been a landscape tie with a row of those scallop edged paving stones tucked in behind the tie, to hold the dirt back.  The landscape tie had totally disappeared in one section, and the other piece was half rotted away, and the whole thing needed fixing because the dirt was flowing underneath and onto the patio.  

So I built this little retaining wall.  At one time I would have tackled this wall project with gusto, but I don't have the same enthusiasm these days, so it took a bit to get me going on it.  In case you are wondering, Larry had his own project going, trying to fix part of the loader on the tractor.  Anyway, thankfully we did have the landscape ties on hand, as well as rebar and spikes, so I got it done.  Larry showed up near the end to help to hold the last tie in place, and did some of the pounding in of the spikes.  Those ties were well dried and were hard as all get out, so pre drilling holes was a necessity.

Eventually that end piece will have to be replaced as well, but seemed okay for now.  The tie at the bottom and the scalloped paver was how the other wall used to look, except those pavers are still standing up fairly straight, where as the ones along the rotted section were leaning over at a very jaunty angle.

Here's a picture from last year, you can see the pavers leaning over

Sunday morning we moved all the pots and stuff onto the lawn.

 I swept up the dirt and then did the pressure washing.  There was still dirt there, so that blasted itself all over the side of the house, which I washed as well, about 6 times it seemed.  I've just stepped out of my yellow rain pants and boots here.

So then comes the decisions as to where to put all the 'stuff'.  I moved the $4 garage sale chiminea to the back corner.  In the summer I plant something in the top (the hellebore is just there until I get it into the ground lol.  Hopefully it won't become another victim), and something else in the fire hole.

I switched the bench around, although it will get some rain on it here.  It used to be under the window to the right. More plants on it that need a home.

One day I WILL get some trim done around that front door.  The little lemon cypress trees are going to have some succulents planted around them for now.

Hoping to paint this an eye popping colour one day.  Another garage sale find.

I was happy to get the little fountain back up and running.  It has been silent for too long.  The rocks are ones I picked up when my sister and I spread my mum's ashes, as well as the ones I collected on our kayaking trip out of Crescent Beach last summer.

 This is how things look now.  A bit more minimalist, and one heck of a lot tidier.  I have a feeling more will be added, but my aim is to keep it clean and tidy, at least for a while, LOL!

 

Two sweet dogs.  Jake at 15 3/4 and Luna at 12 1/4.  Jake had a Vestibular episode  two and a half weeks ago.  He's still a bit wobbly and has a bit of a head tilt to the right.  Other wise he is pretty happy and perky and eating like a horse.  That's okay with me as he had lost some weight and I'm working on getting it back on.  So far he's up 1.5 lbs.

Unfortunately there's still all this stuff left on the lawn, LOL!

Sorting that out and getting it moved is the next job.

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