Category Archives: yard

Week: 5
Project: Patio sprucing
Status: Complete!

I love projects like this one.  After a couple hours of picking up/gathering supplies and planting, the patio looks awesome.

I picked up two new large planters ($12 a piece at Ocean State Job Lots! They have a good selection of garden stuff right now.) and cleaned up a couple more that were gathering dust in the garage.

I bought a bunch of plants, again from Honest Weight (great prices right now- I spent less than $20 on enough plants for four planters plus the border of the garden.) I ended up with four new planters brimming with flowers and plants, plus a newly-planted border along the garden side.  Quite a bit of impact for under $50 and a couple hours time.

I love looking out the back door and seeing the colorful planters and welcoming patio.

Week: 5
Project: Tidy and spruce the patio

The goal this week: get flowers planted in pots around the patio and generally spruce it up. We use the patio a lot during the summer for dinner and after-baby’s-bedtime drinks. It hasn’t gotten a ton of attention yet other than the new border shrubs, and I want to add some potted plants and flowers and just generally clean it up.

The challenge here is that the small breezeway porch that borders the patio is under-construction, as Pat has taken down the ugly louvres that have been there for 50 years and is rebuilding/replacing the three sides.

The patio has come a long way since we moved in, when it was half-asphalt (terrible bumpy broken many-layered asphalt) and half poorly-laid flagstone. Once the porch is done we’ll have completed all the major work we envisioned for this area of our yard. Almost there!