My Birthday Work Party in Pictures

For my birthday, the one thing I really want from my family is help on an outdoor project. Last year, we spruced up our front porch. This year, I asked my husband and daughters to help me transform a space where you might come and look at plants or the pond in the background into a space where you might linger.

At the back of our lawn was this small patio inside a semi-circular garden. On a stack of blocks and pavers sat a large urn, which I filled with flowering plants each spring. The patio was too small to place more than a couple of small chairs. And the neighboring plant life was overgrown and weedy.

In one day, we would make significant progress. As I remembered, I took photos of our work as it went.

the urn removed and the pavers scraped of moss in the early AM

after returning from Home Depot,
additional pavers and plants unloaded from the car

a side view off the little patio, everything's overgrown and weedy

a peek-a-boo view of the pond behind this garden spot

a lot of work and the pavers added to enlarge the patio
(we need to fix the brick mow strip still)
two hydrangeas planted
one daughter sweeping, the other watering

the patio is now large enough for a new settee and 2 new chairs

we brought out the new table, too

a closer view -- it's beginning to look nice

with a pop of color from 2 lime green cushions 
(I sewed the cushions from a thrifted shower curtain 2 years ago)

We filled 2 hanging baskets with begonias
 and Creeping Jenny that volunteered in the soil last summer.
The baskets are hung from 2 canopy trees in the garden,
one on each side of the settee.

the done-for-now conversation spot

We'll continue cleaning up the vegetation in this garden. Today we pruned the azaleas, pulled weeds, cut down pop-up trees, and transplanted some daisies. There's a pretty little Daphne off to the left behind one chair from which I'll try to root a branch. I'll split the plant and move part to the opposite side of the garden. We also plan on moving some sword ferns to this area and adding bark or wood chips as a ground cover in spots to tame it visually.

The patio furniture was my physical birthday gift. I ordered it from Home Depot, delivered a week ago. It's been in the garage waiting for this spruced up space.

I'm envisioning us enjoying afternoons on hot summer days out here. This would be the perfect spot to curl up with a good novel or have a peaceful lunch.

Easter's Pink Tablecloth and Napkins

I could hear my mother's, my grandmother's, and my great-grandmother's voices in my mind as I dropped the linen napkins and tablecloth into the pink dye bath. "Thank you," they said. "Thank you for using our things and not letting them sit idle in a closet. And thank you for being brave enough to try and change them and make them your own."

Changing something like old linens is not without risk. Colors could streak. Stains could look more pronounced. The dye might take unevenly. It does take some courage to experiment, especially with a much loved item entrusted to me by a previous generation of family. I reminded myself that these family linens would not become any prettier in the dark of a closet. I might never use them in their original white rendition. So it was worth a gamble, I thought. (The post where I talked about plans to dye a white tablecloth and stack of napkins can be found here.)

I will say that I did everything I knew to do to ensure a good outcome. I used liquid dye instead of powder. I added the salt and detergent recommended on the label of the dye bottle. And I allowed the linens to agitate in the dye for the full amount of time. I also rinsed, and rinsed, and rinsed the linens. Initially, the pink was more intense than I'd hoped. Rinsing in hot water repeatedly brought the hue down to something closer to what I envisioned.

I'm very pleased with the results. The color took well, uniformly. I would try this again with other linens, should I have a vision in my mind for making an old thing "new." One of the bonuses -- there were a few faint stains on the original tablecloth. Dyeing it seemed to make those stains less noticeable. Of course, YMMV, should you try to dye handed-down linens.