Yay! I did good
I finished my sd_ficathon story and it's now being beta'd. I'm pleased with it and we'll see what comments my beta has about it.
Seeing as it's a beautiful day and I've been cooped up writing for the last couple of days, I went out to my backyard and began spring cleanup. I have lots of ideas for what I want to do back there. I've already killed weeds a couple of times, so I pulled the few survivors. My backyard is very xeroscapish, since it's all landscaping bark and river rock. So any greenery needs to be in a pot or planter. Death to anything else.
Over the winter, my whiskey-barrel planters completely lost integrity, falling apart into slats of wood, nasty metal bands and piles of dirt. Those things are now about $25 each if you can find 'em and even then they're not as big as the ones I had. Plus... eventual dirt aspolsion, so I replaced them with a couple of 20" plastic planters.
I didn't buy any potting soil when I bought the pots, figuring I'll get what I need after I salvage what I can from my current dirt piles. I was amazed. I managed to scavenge enough old potting soil to fill both big pots AND two smaller hanging planters I bought. I did use a trick, considering that I really didn't need those big pots to have ALL that dirt in them. I took two old plastic hanging baskets, emptied them and placed them upside down inside the big pot. Voila, less dirt volume needed. Then I lined the bottom of each of the pots with river rock (scavenged from the river rock border to my yard) for drainage. Then I shoveled the old dirt from the dead planters over that and top-dressed them with the soil from old hanging pots, which was nice and moist and loamy. I don't have any plants yet, but the planters are all ready to go. I have a few smaller planters to prepare and I'm thinking of getting one more big pot for the other side of the patio.
I want to get a garden swing for the backyard and Walmart has a rather nice one reasonbly priced, complete with cushions and a canopy. So I'm kind of planning everything else around that. In preparation, I cleaned up the patio, stowing some stuff away and earmarking some other things for the trash guy. Put away my old teeny-tiny gas grill, since Ex gave me a behemoth 3-burner gas grill when he moved. It's an impressive thing and even has a burner on one side for warming up pots of beans or boiling corn or whatever. It needs a bit of work, since one burner leaks gas, but I can't imagine a time I'd need all three anyway.
Tomorrow I need to get busy on the inside of the house.
Seeing as it's a beautiful day and I've been cooped up writing for the last couple of days, I went out to my backyard and began spring cleanup. I have lots of ideas for what I want to do back there. I've already killed weeds a couple of times, so I pulled the few survivors. My backyard is very xeroscapish, since it's all landscaping bark and river rock. So any greenery needs to be in a pot or planter. Death to anything else.
Over the winter, my whiskey-barrel planters completely lost integrity, falling apart into slats of wood, nasty metal bands and piles of dirt. Those things are now about $25 each if you can find 'em and even then they're not as big as the ones I had. Plus... eventual dirt aspolsion, so I replaced them with a couple of 20" plastic planters.
I didn't buy any potting soil when I bought the pots, figuring I'll get what I need after I salvage what I can from my current dirt piles. I was amazed. I managed to scavenge enough old potting soil to fill both big pots AND two smaller hanging planters I bought. I did use a trick, considering that I really didn't need those big pots to have ALL that dirt in them. I took two old plastic hanging baskets, emptied them and placed them upside down inside the big pot. Voila, less dirt volume needed. Then I lined the bottom of each of the pots with river rock (scavenged from the river rock border to my yard) for drainage. Then I shoveled the old dirt from the dead planters over that and top-dressed them with the soil from old hanging pots, which was nice and moist and loamy. I don't have any plants yet, but the planters are all ready to go. I have a few smaller planters to prepare and I'm thinking of getting one more big pot for the other side of the patio.
I want to get a garden swing for the backyard and Walmart has a rather nice one reasonbly priced, complete with cushions and a canopy. So I'm kind of planning everything else around that. In preparation, I cleaned up the patio, stowing some stuff away and earmarking some other things for the trash guy. Put away my old teeny-tiny gas grill, since Ex gave me a behemoth 3-burner gas grill when he moved. It's an impressive thing and even has a burner on one side for warming up pots of beans or boiling corn or whatever. It needs a bit of work, since one burner leaks gas, but I can't imagine a time I'd need all three anyway.
Tomorrow I need to get busy on the inside of the house.