My Happy Place

Spring has sprung! Springtime in Memphis is my favorite. All the flowers are in bloom, and for about one to two weeks we have perfect, gorgeous, you-only-read-about-in-books weather. Someone actually wrote about this perfect week here. My favorite thing about spring is getting to clean out my dead from winter flower beds. I love having beautiful flowers and plants in the beds on my patio. We have a townhome, so no big yard to speak of. I love the the manual labor it takes to get the patio looking this way. Weird, I know. For some reason I love it! I think it's because I love sitting back and knowing I accomplished it. It's such a great feeling of satisfaction. It's the same satisfaction I get sitting in my house after I've cleaned it on Thursday. (Thursday is cleaning day, I think its because I like to wake up on Friday knowing I'm starting the weekend with a clean house. Funnily enough, my parents do the same thing.) This all started when I bought the place and my mom came to town and helped me plant everything. She dug up all the monkey grass (hate the stuff!) and we even laid the brick for the glider to sit on. The patio is my happy place. I love starting my morning sitting out there, sipping my venti vanilla no water chair from Starbucks while reading my daily Bible devotional to start my day. I love coming home from work and sitting on the patio while sipping a glass of wine water and chatting with my husband about the day. It's the little things in life, right? So here is the patio transformation as it happens every year.

This is after I cleaned out all the beds, got out all the dead leaves, old mulch and dead flowers. I think I had already taken a few bags to the dumpster.

It's hard to tell, but there are a few hostas and caladiums sitting there.

Got this fire pit as a gift, and since we aren't allowed to have open flames I started using it as a planter a few years ago.

I love geraniums and I love this wall hanger. I always put geraniums in it because it reminds me of the window boxes we saw in Venice:

The hosta in the turquoise pot as done better than any of them. And don't you just love hanging fuchsia plants?

My mom got me this glider when I first bought the place. I love it because it looks like those retro lawn chairs from the 60's.

My patio as I post this. Had to enjoy the view from inside today. Thanks to God for watering my flowers!

Here's some pics of the patio this past fall. I did more than I usually do and loved it. I have a feeling this fall I might be too busy/exhausted to get it to look like this again.