Fun Monday - Outdoor Time

Will someone please tell me where the rest of the week goes? It seems like everytime I turn around it's Monday again. The weekends go by way too fast.

On the upside, if it's Monday, it must be time to play Fun Monday again (which is not a bad thing). This week Janis at LIFE ACCCORDING TO JAN AND JER. is our hostess and she came up with this challenge:
Since the Lazy Hazy Days of summer are upon us now, tell us what activities you enjoy doing outside and how do you stay cool. Share some photos of both if you wish.

OKAY! I've actually been pretty busy outside, which is rather unusual for me. I'm not sure why I have been so inspired, but I have, so I'm rolling with it.

You may recall that I had great plans for the backyard once the pool was yanked out. That didn't happen.

I did, however, begin the experimental container garden. It's late in the season, but I wondered if me and my black thumb could actually grow anything. I started these from seed. There are tomatoes, cucumbers and yellow squash.

They are actually GROWING! Once they got a little bigger than these, I transferred them to larger containers... tomatoes in one, cukes in one, and squash in one. They're still growing. No veggies yet, but who knows? Maybe starting late like this, I missed the heatwave that killed most everyone else's gardens off. I might see something yet.

I was coming back in from getting the mail one day, and it occurred to me that my front yard was looking pretty overgrown and unkempt. The boxwoods that stretched across the front of the house were definitely shaggy. I got out my clippers and after a little pruning discovered that the boxwoods were actually only just this side of the grave. Out of probably 15 bushes (planted way too close together), only 4 were salvagable and really, that's a bit iffy too. Today I decided I wanted to take the rest of them out and just create a big flower bed in the front.

Not long ago, my mom's cousin was passing through town and left me a box of rain lily bulbs at the farm. Dad brought them in for me and I stuck them in the ground. I was gobsmacked to discover that most of them lept into bloom two days later! Beautiful, isn't it?

There are pictures of my front planter bed in the "great plans" post linked above. It's an L-shaped planter that ended at the front porch. Somehow, it felt wrong and this morning, Darling Man and I were discussing why the front still felt wrong when we hit on the idea of taking out the square division that was meeting the porch. While I was away at the farm today, DM got out his shovel, removed all the dirt and sawed off that portion of the planter.

It's rather amazing how much better this feels. I'm planning to put four large paver stones there to make a connector from the sidewalk to the little patch of concrete that runs right in front of the porch.

We've pretty much ignored the front yard since we moved in. It was in decent shape, but the interior needed so much work that we kind of forgot that the front yard was there except for the occasional mowing and killing of trees.

Oh, remember the rose I pruned so severely that I KNEW it wouldn't bloom again until next year? Mother Nature surprised me again. There are other buds on it as well.

Sometimes I love being proved wrong.

Our cooling off mechanism is also featured in the "didn't happen" link above.

Go visit Janis and see what other people are doing with their outdoor time this summer!