How our garden grows

In fits and starts, the backyard garden is finally complete! I've developed some serious yard envy walking around our neighborhood. So, nearly a month after buying most of my plants, I finally got them in the ground.

Spring beginnings. Rhubarb starts to shoot up. April 12, 2011.

Clearing out the dead brush. Rhubarb takeover begins! May 7, 2011.

Tilling and weeding and tilling and weeding. June 8, 2011.

And....finally some serious progress!

Onions and tomatoes.

Path in to the garden.

My little brick wall housing some perennials and annuals.

Things are looking pretty green back here! June 12, 2011.

Before:

And after:

Of course, this is just one of many, many gardens in our yard. For example...

The garden along the fence. Note my un-hanging basket. It's too heavy and rain-soaked to hang from the pole. Fail.

So far we've had irises, daisies, those yellow flowers in the photo above, and several other flowers/plants that I can't identify/don't know the name (plus a million weeds I have yet to pull). However, my mom would tell you that even this is progress. I used to hate flower shopping with her as a kid!

With the porch floor painted and garden in better shape, that leaves me with assembling a clothesline and filling in the holes in the driveway for my summer projects. I have a few extras I'll be sneaking onto that list, though. :)

Painting the porch floor.

I've been looking forward to painting the front porch floor since winter. In fact, in late February, I started collecting inspiration. And then continued to collect inspiration via pinning things to the genius site known as Pinterest. And somewhere along the way, I recalled how much I love the shape of a hibiscus flower, so the pattern for the porch floor was born!

I was quite lucky to stumble on a website that led to my favorite font downloading website (dafont.com), which had a hibiscus font! This became extremely helpful in creating my stencil for the design.

After downloading the font, I picked three letters that I liked and knew would cut out well as a stencil (C, D, and Y).

After blowing up the letters to a font size of 400, I printed them off and slid them underneath "stencil blanks" that I found at JoAnn's (that were on clearance for 97 cents-FTW!). I originally tried to cut/trace these on cardboard, which never would have worked, so thank goodness for stumbling across the stencil blanks.

After the images were transferred with a Sharpie, I cut out my new stencil (atop the previously mentioned cardboard). I used a combination of an Xacto knife for the tight corners, scissors, and even a hole punch for those little dots.

I gathered my gear: the stencils, patio paint, and spouncers (which were also mere pennies on clearance!).

Spouncer=sponge on a stick. These worked well, but since I only had three I ended up cutting a sponge into small pieces to avoid continually washing the paint out of the sponge to switch colors.

I also found this patio paint at JoAnn's. Originally I was going to use higher-duty paint, but I figured this would be okay since the porch is already painted and my design was merely going on top.

I sorted my colors into matching color bowls. Not necessary, but it just happened (and I secretly loved it).

I taped down my stencil (yes, with electrical tape since I am constantly losing the painter's tape).

And I spounced! They key was to not use a ton of paint and to dab the sponge on the side of the bowl to take off some of the excess before applying to the stencil.

Not too bad for the first attempt. I started in the corner (in a spot that will be covered by furniture) just in case I made any mistakes. I also kept a paper towel on hand to wipe off any smudges.

I discovered after a few flowers that I could use each stencil 3-5 times based on how neat the image was coming out before I had to wash (which saved a lot of time!).

And I filled a plastic container with water and immersed  the stencil immediately after painting to get it as clean as possible. Soap=bubbles on the stencil, so I switched to pure water after that and it did the trick.

And then kept my two "on-deck" stencils wrapped between an old dish towel to dry them off between uses.

Happily spouncing away on an otherwise rainy day!

Ah, completed work! All this in a few hours (with many breaks in between).

I bordered most of the patio, then added more detail to each of the corner areas as well as adding some random flowers in the middle. Hopefully not too much of it will be covered up when I put the furniture back.