Patio

So it seems I haven't posted since January.  There's been rather a lot going on.  The biggest thing (thankfully) is that I moved house. Sylvan and I now live in a duplex on the opposite end of town, and aside from some freak-accident plumbing issues in the first couple of weeks, we both really love it.  The place is small, but good.

And it has a lovely backyard patio area.  It was finished, freshly power-washed, and just waiting for someone to love it when we moved in.  Here's a quick sketch:

made with Icovia

The patio surface itself is tumbled aggregate cemented over the slab - kind of golden brown and agate-y.  A lot of people hate this kind of surface because it's outdated (the house was built in 1965, after all); but I like it.  It's natural-looking, and easier to keep clean than plain concrete.

It also coordinates well with the 3' wide gravel-filled garden bed to the north of the patio (sorry, guys, north is at the bottom in this pic), and to the south underneath the big paving stones that are set into the ground there.  On top of the gravel are a trio of stepping stones in the same tumbled aggregate. 

On the west (left) side of the patio is a wooden trellis built into a frame, which comes down from the roofline - the whole thing is covered, and shaded. Woohoo! 

I put an outdoor rug down to cushion my (and my dogs') feet against the aggregate, and matching blue chairs.  I also put nearly all of the former houseplants out here. 

The poor houseplants got no light at all at the old house.  I crowded them around every available light source, and rotated them from room to room, but by the time I moved out, nearly all of them were dying.  Being outside, however, has perked up every single one of them.  "Dying" plants are now blooming and putting out new branches for the first time in years!  With the exception of one scorched Dracaena which I placed in direct sunlight by mistake, everyone's done great.  Everyone also got a new pot, and fresh dirt, about three weeks ago, and they're loving it. 

Daisy surveys her domain

One day I'll figure out how to get a nice picture of lights,  but for now, I'll just tell you that to the left of this picture, , I have several tiny hanging plants in little pots hanging from hooks on the trellis, as well as several little colored glass "Moroccan" candle lanterns with LED tealights in them.

There's also a string of 1" cracked glass globe lights lining the entire top edge of the patio area.  When it and the candles are all lit up in the evening, it's really lovely. 

Too bad my camera HATES it.

Here's that bougainvillea. I have no idea what variety it is - I rescued it from a table full of sad-looking plants that were marked down and ready to be thrown in the trash.  It's a little stringy and slow, but it'll be just fine eventually.

This little guy starts out white, then slowly turns to pink, then hot pink. 

Almost-mature flower bracts.

A little scene I made on the table by my chair, hoping to learn to draw silver, and reflections in shiny metal.  It's harder than it looks.

A Rabbit's Foot Fern, which has fuzzy rhizomes that [will eventually] stick over the side of the container.  They look like tarantula legs.

Tiny spotty neighbor is a Scilla of some kind, but I forget which.  The only thing I really know about this plant is that cats LOVE it and will mow the entire thing flat in a single night while you're asleep. 

Tarantula legs!

A wee "Moss Rose" Portulaca.  I have grown these for nearly twenty years.  I love their little waxy flowers. And the fact that you can practically just LOOK at them and they make more plants.

I can never remember what these are called. 

But no kidding, this died over a year ago. I forgot to clean out the pot and just left it - keeping plants at the last house was just a Sisyphean clusterfuck, and I got so disheartened. 

I stuck this pot out on the patio to see if I could figure out what to put in it. In the meantime, it got watered along with everything else, and after about two weeks, it sprouted a leaf! And then it sprouted another one!

This is my Asparagus Fern, now about 4' across.  It was drooping badly, pale and dusty looking.  In addition to lack of light, it was ridiculously potbound.

All of the plants got new pots and soil.  About three weeks later, this guy threw up a THICK new stalk - it was so big, I thought another plant had taken root in the pot.  It had been so long since this thing made a new branch that I'd forgotten what a new branch looks like.

Ghost branch.

A Coleus, and a Dracaena (var. Janet Craig). 

Fun fact about me: I think I might be a hoarder.  Or at least, was headed down that road, before the move.  Thanks to that, at least, I had a BUNCH of nice flowerpots in the garage.  I used them all on this patio, and recycled all the plastic, and threw away all the broken, ancient terra cotta. Didn't spend a penny, and everybody got a new outfit. 

A red Mandevilla I picked up at the store when I went to buy soil for the pots. Oops. 

This is on one of the stepping stones to the north (bottom) of the patio, in the gravel area. The metal trellis behind it in this picture is an old Ikea iron headboard, which has made a really good trellis over the years. 

Two Dracaenas (Warneckii) and a pot full of itty bitty Sansivieras. These plants are the ones that are struggling the most to come back from the half-dead.

Especially since the Warneckiis were a single plant until about three weeks ago.  It'll be fine - this plant is over 20 years old, and I've split it and repotted the parts probably a dozen times.















That's all for now.  I've got some woodworking projects and some art I'm working on. My duplex-neighbor is moving out this weekend, and the owers are going to be doing some work around the place.  I think I'll talk to them about maybe doing some real, in-ground gardening, now that my neighbor's 15,000 dollar-store lawn ornaments will be out of the way.