Wednesday, May 27, 2009

A Place In The Shade


James is working different hours this week, so we've been able to get projects done during the day together. Today we had a fantastic day, not only did we "live green" today by making two trips to the recycling center to drop off items, but we did a lot of work outside. James has been working really diligently around the yard to make it look beautiful. It was a weed-choked and red-mud covered patch when we bought the house, not even flowers in the flower beds. He's been out there already this year applying weed and feed to the yard, and now we've signed up with a service that will come out several times a year and give our yard that extra special touch- they promise a lush, green, weed-free yard! We are looking forward to having that "golf course" look soon.

While I bought a few perennials and a rosebush at Lowe's this week for the front flower beds, I also bought a few vegetable plants. Two tomato plants, two green pepper plants, a jalapeno plant, and a cayenne pepper plant. Me? I don't like peppers, but James loves them and I thought they sounded easy to grow. I had big giant planters leftover from my previous, previous home so I figured they would do the trick. The photo above is the final stage of the project James has been working on for a few days. This is the area under our deck, and where the doors to our basement come out.

It was a weedy, muddy area that was, well, useless and I was guilty of leaving junk out there. James tirelessly dragged bag after bag of rock down the hill and, after pinning down some landscape fabric to keep those weeds in check, he spread the rock out. I put my veggie plants out there, we found some of our old lawn furniture gathering dust and voila. Now we have a nice little sitting area. I wish I had a "before" picture to show you how bad it looked in that area. This was totally James' idea and I think he did a great job. We plan to decorate it a little more, maybe a wind chime or spinners, maybe even some potted flowers.

We did do a few projects inside the house as well. James patiently removed the remaining plastic covers from the formal dining room chairs we bought almost three years ago!! He had to unscrew and remove each seat cushion on all eight chairs to do this, so you can see why I put it off! Most of all, we had a wonder
ful afternoon together of working side by side and enjoying the rare weekday lunch at home with each other. James had sushi (spicy tuna), and I had a small salad of marinated artichoke hearts and marinated whole mushrooms, with a little goat cheese on top. Yummy!! To think I used to heat up a frozen diet dinner in the microwave, blah.

We'll have the afternoon together again tomorrow, so we are already thinking up projects we can get accomplished. It is amazing to me how much my husband motivates me and inspires me!!


(James working on the dining room chairs- thank you honey!)


3 comments:

  1. The seating area under the deck looks wonderfully inviting! A few potted flowers to compliment the pots of veggies will be perfect. Good job you two!! And from where we are (living in the desert at 100+ degrees already) that little spot of shade looks awesome!!

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  2. We are lucky, we've had a few days in the low 80's but that's as high as we've been so far. We just last week turned on our AC for the first time. Spring in ATL has been wonderful for us!

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  3. It really looks nice. A cold glass of tea and a good book will fit perfect.

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