Rare Burst of Gardening

I am a sporadic gardener, at best.  I like the IDEA of gardening.  Better, I like being in a well-tended and colorful garden.  When we moved into our house, I was excited about having a garden I could make just the way I wanted it.  And then I discovered the frustration of soil that is more clay and rocks than actual dirt.  Over the years, my enthusiasm for working in the yard has, shall we say, waned.

But every once in a while the urge strikes.  It tends to take the right weather (summery but cool), a day or two when I don't have anything pressing, and the energetic desire to get something done.  And it hit me this week, so I've spent a lot of time out in the garden.  I've not done anything huge, but the improvements are significant.  I'm quite pleased with myself.

First, I rounded up all of the clay flower pots, headed off to the nursery, and came back and potted flowers.

Very satisfying!  Then, having thought that hanging flowers would look nice, I trotted back to the hardware store for brackets and more pots and more flowers.

Ooh, pretty!  Very colorful together!

Now the patio looks rather inviting, if I do say so myself.

Lots of pots!  Four hanging flowerpots!  And comfy chairs for lounging and reading!  The concrete is newly painted, too -- last week's project -- so it all looks fresh.

I spent a day doing serious work on what had been an abandoned flower bed -- turning the soil, adding amendment, starting to plant... It's still in progress (you can see it behind the clump of flower pots there on the left) but I'm very satisfied by how far I got.  I've got to add more flowers and dig up some wooly lambs' ear from the hugely overgrown patch there on the right, to add for the border... But it's well on its way. 

As soon as my back stops aching, I'll be back out there.