Home Sweet Home- New Garden Additions

It's been about a month and our new patio garden is both growing and changing. Some of the initial flower box plants have already died. I'm not sure if it's due to lack of proper care or maybe the plants were not the best suited for the patio. Either case, Dan's mom is a gardening expert and she sorted us out by getting our garden in shape and planting new flowers for us. She also left us with a bunch of tip and hopefully we will be able to keep it going. I know that there is a bit of a learning curve to getting the patio garden just right and we will likely have to buy more plants before figuring out what works. Here are some of the new plants in the flower boxes. I think the pretty purple flowers are called Mexican Heather. So pretty.

Beautiful new flowers thanks to Dan's mom!

New blooms.

I did get a bit of unfortunate news regarding the flower boxes. I ran into a neighbor who is on the board of directors and he told me that they will likely make us remove them due to water damage and rot to the wood railing. Dan and I will need to come up with an alternate plan.

We also have a few plants for the inside of our canopy. I know that I have not yet blogged on our new patio living space, but here is a small sneak peek. Each of the corners has a built-in shelf, so this is one corner and eventually we will fill in the others with beautiful flowers. The bigger pot is sitting on our patio side table.

Canopy flowers.

Our last new edition is Spike the cactus. Dan really wanted to get a cactus and I wasn't sold on the idea. However, Dan, as usual, has a great idea and now I think that Spike is the coolest plant on the patio. Dan bought the big pot and added the decorative rocks. It's looks great. Apparently, in a hundred years Spike could grow to be thirty feet. Wow!

Spike.

Nicolette is obsessed with Spike. She goes right up to him and runs the side of her face along his sharp quills. Cat brushes are overrated.

Home Sweet Home- New Patio Doors

The patio doors have been broken ever since I was a little kid. It never seemed to be a big deal, since we never used the patio. However, now that we are fixing up the patio ( pictures still to come) and having the other windows in the house replaced (yet more pictures to come), it was imperative to have new patio doors. We went through Home Depot for the windows. Using Home Depot has been nothing short of a disaster, but I need to hold off on a blog rant until the window job is completed. Home Depot used two different contractors, one for the patio sliders and one for the other windows. The patio sliders were done by a company called Adan construction and although they did a good job, I felt very much slighted by the head builder, who would direct everything towards Dan. I was also upset that they did not bother to cover any of the work area with tarp to minimize the dust. The head guy basically told me that it would be very messy and it was. A fine layer of dust covered the entire master bedroom. Every other contractor that has worked on the house has placed plastic coverings to lessen the mess. I expect there to be some clean up on my part, but I thought the mess that Adan construction left was unacceptable and unprofessional. If they were not going to make efforts to cover the work area, I wish that we had been warned when the appointment had been set up. Ridiculous. Here is a picture taken mid construction.

I do think that the new sliders look great and I am happy the job is done. Here are some pictures of the 1970's sliders that were original to the house. One is located at the top of the stairs and the other is in the master bedroom.

A close-up of the really old door handle from inside the master bedroom.

The old sliders were ugly, old and didn't even lock! We also had vertical blinds and decided to go with horizontal blinds that are between two panes of glass. This means no more cleaning blinds, a big win in my book. The new sliders are not only practical, but look so much better in the space. They have thick, white molding that frames the sliders and makes it look modern and pretty. Here are pictures of the new windows.

Home Sweet Home- Patio, Splash of Color

The wasps have been evicted, although a few have returned and have even attempted to rebuilt a nest. Dan destroyed their efforts and killed them with wasp repellent. We looked up natural deterrents to try to figure out how to get them to stay away. One site was selling fake wasp nests. It told us that wasps are territorial and will not built a nest in close proximity to another nest. However, last week I saw a video that one of Dan's friends posted on facebook. It was a house in England that had an attic filled with nests (huge, very scary nests) and one of the nests was an old nest in which new wasps had decided to build a home. So, we don't trust this fake hive idea. We also read that they don't like peppermint or dish soap. We went to soap route, diluted it with water and sprayed the mixture all over the patio railing. Worst case, it doesn't work. Hopefully the wasps will take the hint and rebuild elsewhere. With the wasp situation under control, Dan was able to finish his flower box project. They beautiful and every time I look out at the patio, I can't help but smile. It was really completely Dan's project, he did it all while I was at work. All I had to do was go to Lowes and help him pick out the pretty flowers. Dan took all of these pictures as he was putting it together on Saturday.

Here are all of the supplies gathered. The flowers are sitting in the planters, but not yet planted.

Since the planter boxes would not sit on the railing properly, Dan had to improvise. He bought a piece of wood and got to work with his saw. He knows how to use his tools!

He had to cut each piece of wood and nail it in the spot for stability. Truthfully, I have not taken a good closeup look to see exactly how they are situated, but Dan knows his stuff. The only hitch will be if we have done something against condo code without realizing it. I really hope that they don't ask us to remove them.

Here is the finished result.

A few closeups of some of the flowers. We carefully read all of the info on the flowers and all stated being able to take full sun. Hopefully they can also take the heat of the patio. If they die, we may need to switch to a cactus garden. We considered it while at Lowes, but the flowers were just so pretty. I also want to note that Lowes was a much nicer place to visit than Home Depot and they have a superior garden center and patio furniture selection.

This one is my favorite. I love how the bloom is multi colored. the colors remind me of popsicles.

With the exception of our gardening supplies...

we still have a bare patio. However, we got some great ideas when visiting Lowes and as soon as we have more funds, we will be sprucing it up. Right now, I am just happy to see colorful flowers each time I walk by our patio doors.