Spring Spruce Ups

The weather was finally warm enough the past few days to begin preparing the outdoor spaces around our home for spring and summer. With the last patch of snow gone in our back yard (hurray!), the patio furniture and urns made their annual spring time appearance and there was lots of raking, sweeping and soil preparation.

I even managed to plant a few herbs – rosemary, parsley and lavender – along with some lettuce, as they seem to tolerate the fluctuating temperatures of this time of year.

It was fun to look around the yard to see if the plants we transplanted in the fall survived the winter. I am happy to report several look good and others we will have to wait a little bit longer to tell.

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One project which has been on the radar for some time now is creating a fire pit area. I love the look of the picture above with the four Adirondack chairs arranged in a circle. We are hoping to replicate something similar with a fire pit in place of the large pot. Below is the space we will be working with. The small ring of rocks with the hole in the middle was what we used last year for our outdoor fires.

As you can see, our designated area is more sheltered and sits next to our “in progress” garden. We started the garden a few years after we moved in and have been slowly adding to it one feature at a time.

Our plan is to cover the ground with the same small gravel which we used for the garden paths. At the moment it is all dirt and not very user friendly. We are still undecided about the fire pit itself, right now we simply have a hole in the ground surrounded by rocks. Several friends have the portable type pits like the one shown above, but we are leaning towards building ours out of stone to match the rest of our home’s hardscaping. What would you do? I would love to know your opinion.

I hope to have some updated pictures of this area in a month or so of our progress!
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