Our first summer here in our current house I was out on the patio as much as I could during the summer months. We had our little herb garden scattered about in their little pots and comfy cozy patio furniture for which our patio was just the right size. Well, one thing we learned that summer was it gets damn hot out there being that the patio faces the west and the blazing setting sun with little to no sun shade available. So, the following year we invested in a super nifty patio umbrella that has a huge canopy and can be adjusted to shade specific areas of the patio depending on where the sun was pounding down. Also the Christmas of 2006 had Santa bringing B a brand new shiny grill. This means that adding the grill and the ginormous umbrella made the patio suddenly seem a whole lot smaller. Add to that, we didn't do a very good job with our herb garden so we had a whole bunch of dead or overgrown pots of plants hanging around what was once our lovely patio garden. Consequently, the summer of 2007 saw very little of me hanging out on the patio and it left me feeling pretty bummed out. We had this great space I loved the year prior, but in 2007 I just couldn't be bothered with it.
Now it is the summer of 2008 (in case you hadn't realized ;) )and I've decreed that I shall fall back in love with my patio again! And lucky for me, I've fallen and fallen hard. :) And really, it didn't take much! The first of two changes that we made was was the deck extension. B spied a neighbor's nifty innovation for getting more patio space, so he did the same. What was once a 4 ft by 12 ft strip of dirt off the side of our patio is now occupied by a lovely new side deck built by B and his dad. They did a fantastic job, and B is now a deck building pro! :)
The second change was adding a bunch of very pretty sun loving flowers. We overestimated just a wee bit and wound up with 9 separate pots and hanging baskets of flowers. But wow - what a difference adding those colorful flowers have made!! I love hanging out on the patio again now. It feels more spacious and looks much prettier. Amazing what those two changes have done! Now...if I could only silence my neighbors' hideous taste in music. (Two weeks ago in the middle of the day some idiot insisted on blaring Foreigner's "I Wanna Know What Love Is." SIX TIMES IN A ROW. Haaaaaate.)
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