Drew has been super excited about our back porch since we moved in last August. For awhile, we were too overwhelmed with the inside of our house to even think about the outside, and then it was winter. Now that spring/summer has started to show it's lovely face, however, we thought we'd get the back porch set up.
I don't have a before photo of the porch, but it was pretty sad. Empty of everything but a snow shovel (which didn't even get used this winter) and looking out over an overgrown backyard.
I service of getting the backyard to look a little less wild, we bought a weed wacker a few weekends ago. (Side note: Apparently "wacker" is not spelled "whacker," as I'd hoped. Such a missed spelling opportunity.) We had originally thought a mower would do the job better, but our upstairs neighbor alerted us to the million rocks that lie just under the "grass" (it's really not grass, more like a collection of plants that have decided to grow in the same location). A lawnmower would have probably sent small rocks whizzing all over the backyard. It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye, or so they say. Drew went to town on the backyard with the weed wacker (with goggles on, just in case), including on a few plants that were meant to be there. Whoops! It's already all grown back because we've been having some serious Noah's Ark weather around here lately, but it looked great while it lasted.
We also went to Ikea and bought the "TULLERÖ"porch set for $99:
They're not extraordinarily cushy, but that's probably a good thing just in case they get wet. I wanted to buy more fun stuff for the porch but Drew can only take so much Ikea at one time, so we went home.
We set up the table and put the cushions on the chairs. Very nice, but missing a certain je ne sais quoi. This is where my surprise project for Drew came in. While he was out of town, I went back to Ikea (where I would totally live if they'd let me) and picked out some fun porch stuff.
Then I went to Home Depot in search of some hanging plants. The nursery at the HD at South Bay Center, for those of you in Boston, is nowhere near as impressive as the nursery at the Lowes in Dedham. It's a little further from us, but it was worth the trip.
Just a sidenote: Purchasing plants is a big step for me. I have never successfully kept anything alive, ever, but I've had a little more success over the past year. I have a plant in my office that my parents sent me on my first day of work that is still alive (go self!). Our neighbor gave us a hanging plant in October or so that we kept alive indoors all winter, but I can't say it's doing too well on the porch right now. We'll see if it perks up a little. We also have a basil plant from the same neighbor, which is doing great but has very tall stalks that keep bending over. The last plant in our lives is a geranium that I got recently as a party favor. It looks a little sad but I'm not sure if that's how geraniums are supposed to look, so TBD on that one.
Back to Lowes - Although my original idea was to get some plants (which scare me less than flowers), the hanging plants were $14.99 and hanging flowers were $7.49. If I kill something that only cost $7.50, I will feel much less sad than if I kill something twice that expensive, so I got two pots of petunias and came home to set things up.
When Drew arrived home from chaperoning 44 eighth graders on a four-day field trip through Washington D.C., he found this:
Drew was ecstatic, mostly because he knew he'd escaped an Ikea trip but also because now we can sit on a nice porch. You can even sit out in the rain without getting wet! All of our overgrown vegetation makes you feel a little bit like you're in a jungle/forest/swamp (but in a good way). Everyone should come on over and sit on the porch with us! (But only if we know you.)
