It’s summer, which means we’ve been spending a lot of time outside. We’ve done a few things to the backyard, and now we’re starting to flesh out the living space aspect.
So here’s a tour of our terrible, awful backyard. Full of weeds, bald patches, an unstained deck and next to no landscaping!
This spring, Ryan got an itch to build more garden beds. He added two more to our collection.
He’s growing asparagus, basil, tomatoes, cucumbers, cauliflower and black beans. He had snow peas and spinach, but they died during a weeklong 90 degree streak. He also tried onions and peppers, but the peppers didn’t take when he transplanted them and the onions mysteriously disappeared (I blame the birds!). He also tilled a giant 40′ x 10′ stretch for watermelons, cantaloupes and other sprawling fruit.
I love gardening, but given my earlier displaced center of gravity, I haven’t done anything with it this year. It’s truly the husband’s pet project!
You might recall we had also been composting. We stepped up our game with a dedicated compost bin (on the far left of that bottom picture). Ryan built it using cedar fencing. It’s pretty huge! We don’t have any plans to harvest what’s inside. It’s just nice to not fill up our trash can with food scraps.
And here’s the deck now. We haven’t stained it yet (we had to wait since it was new, pressure treated lumber), but we’re teaming with Thompson’s WaterSeal to show off a couple of their great products. We just need the forecast to stop having a 30% chance of scattered thunderstorms every single day!
The table is from Target. Their patio stuff was on clearance and we snagged it for $70. The matching chairs were only available online and went on sale this week, so they’re on the way. The umbrella was a gift from Ryan’s parents.
The Adirondacks are from last summer (I won them at Haven Conference!). The table is another clearance Target find. I grabbed a couple of clearance outdoor lumbar pillows too, but forgot to put them on for the photos.
Moving down, Ryan bought an Acorn grill a few months ago. He absolutely loves it and I love that he shares in some of the cooking! We had it on the deck until we brought the new table home. It’s better down here on the concrete. The deck box is a piece that needs some work. It’s going to get a paint job, perhaps as early as this weekend.
Zooming out a bit, you can see we have a trash can problem. Yuck-o. Needs to be hidden!
So that’s what’s going on. But we have some things to do:
- Wash and stain the deck
- Paint the deck box
- Repair a leak in the gutter
- Replace floodlight with a sensored floodlight
- Get a new screen door
- Add lattice to the base of the deck (and stain it!)
- Plant a couple of bushes around the deck steps (and add more plants elsewhere – we’d like a couple of fig bushes and some smaller fruit trees)
- Overseed the yard
- Build something to hide the trash and recycling bins
This stuff is really just scratching the surface. Adding accessories – lighting, candles, plants, etc. – is really what will make it an enjoyable space.
Eventually, we want to fence in the backyard and lay a patio at the base of the steps. Those are two long term projects though.
I’m hoping to tackle the staining very soon! Just waiting for a two or three day drought.
How have you made your outdoor living space better for the summer?
