I'm exhausted. 

Dan and I have spent the last couple of weeks spring cleaning our home in anticipation of having a few friends over for a BBQ this past weekend. The primary focus has been  the patio, which has been a wreck all winter. 

The floor was covered in dirt and sawdust from when our flooring was replaced. The sawdust was absolutely everywhere. It took several days of sweeping and hosing to get it clean. I'm pleased to report that you can almost eat off of it. 

We don't have green thumbs. All of the beautiful flowers that Dan's mom planted for us last fall have shriveled up and died. It looked like we had tumble weeds in our planters. The only one that survived was our cactus, Spike. 

We started to get complaints from the HOA about the state of our planter boxes, which was followed by a letter sent out to the entire complex urging residents to do some patio maintenance. We took the hint and decided to replace our dead plants with cactus. They're drought resistant and covered in scary spikes which seems to equate to "Leave Me Alone". We like low maintenance.  

Other than easy care, we think that they look pretty. 

Planting them was a little dicey. I did all of the planting and when I tried to plant this cactus with a little yellow spikes, my hand was punctured all over. The spikes went right through my gardening gloves and I spent about half an hour with tweezers trying to get them all out. They stung.

Unfortunately, we have had one cactus casualty. This was the first one that I planted and I think that I was too rough. My gardening techniques are not exactly refined. The others seem to have taken root, but this one is withering away.  

We acquired another new plant that was a gift from friends.  We will probably plant it in the box to replace the dead cactus.

We have one very cool non-plant addition to our patio. We desperately needed a ice bucket for entertaining and Dan found one better than a bucket, he found an ice boat! I imagine that the patio might slowly take on a nautical theme.