Sunnyside Up

We finally scored a pretty weekend! And I despite the fact I had about six hours of Curb Appeal banked on my T-Faux, I actually went outside. Thanks to the many hours of CA I've been watching I started to notice how little of it my house has. It's cute, but not really appealing. I got up early  Saturday and mowed the yard, which helped, but not enough.

I decided to do something about tarting my space up.  I needed flowers. I had two plastic planters waiting in the basement  and the two that wintered outside waiting to work.  Did you know that with a power drill at your side there are very few containers that can not become planters? I mean really. If it can be drilled through, it can be filled with dirt. You don't have to spend a lot of money on something that calls itself a planter, if you think something would be a good planter - Make it into a planter!

Okay. I had the planters, I needed to go to get some dirt. I waited in line at the dirt store for forty-five minutes! Everyone in Raleigh had the same idea. Post dirt gettage, I needed flowers. Wallyworld was kind enough to put some very nice flowers on clearance because they had gotten a little old. Not dead,  not diseased not out of season just old. I got them for half off. They had the same, if younger flowers for six dollars a pot. Dumb.

Wally didn't have my bedding plants so it was onward and outward. I discovered after a online search for soaker hose tutorials that I needed a widget thingy for my soaker hoses. A widget that by the way you can't buy on the open market! I didn't know that until I went to every market I could think of though.  You have to have a special flow limit-er or pressure reducer to properly use a soaker hose.  The $8 fifty foot soaker hoses I bought don't have the same kind of reducer - They have kind of the same thing but not really. I broke down and bought a $14 dollar twenty-five foot hose because it did come with one. I'm just going to out it first in the line and let it do the job. I could have done more driving around but I just wasn't in the mood. I had planting to do and I still hadn't found my bedding plants.

Stop number four for the morning I found my bedding plants. Finally, Curb Appeal somewhat achieved.

This year my azalea bloomed, last year it didn't.

Planter Detail

Deck Appeal!

After I worked on my flower garden, I went and looked at a garden on a larger scale at the  Raleigh Arboretum .