I took a few pictures of the porch area yesterday, since some of you had mentioned wanting a little tour.

In no particular order, here we go!

Our weathered former kitchen island. I know some of you preferred it in its previous pristine white, but I really love the way the way the elements have had their way with it. I love chippy.

The Boston fern is barely hanging in there since it had an unfortunate encounter with an unexpected hard frost while I was away in Brooklyn. I’m hoping it will recover after a nice long summer outside.

Just to the right of the entrance. The purple coneflowers have spread even more this year. We’re going to have masses of them. That’s the entrance to our basement and beyond that, the picket fence we recently added.

We figured out that we’ve had this glider for over 25 years. Don found it by the curb when we were living in San Diego. He paid $25 for it, so that works out to $1/yr. A bargain. We love it so much!

The vintage and rusty wrought iron planter I will never regret buying. I love it.

I had to wait until the impatiens had grown a bit.

It’s not really that different from other years, although I usually buy 3 of the purple hanging plants. But they’re expensive, so I just purchased one this year. The other hanging plants are full of impatiens. I usually buy one flat and from that I plant all the pots and the hanging pots as well.

We were chatting about the porch the other day, remembering that the moment I saw it, I wanted the house. Don’s selling point was the high ceiling in the kitchen. Mine was the porch. I grew up with a porch, which seemed big to me at the time, but was much smaller than the one we have now. Our neighborhood was full of porches and I have fond memories of playing, reading, chatting, and conversing with our neighbors – all from that porch.

We also had a porch on the house we rented in San Diego – which is why Don bought the glider. It was lovely as well, though I was so busy in those days that I didn’t get to use it as much as I would have liked.

And now we have this beauty. An extra room from April until November.

We’re grateful.

Stay safe.

Happy Thursday.

I’m sitting on the glider this morning, enjoying the porch before it gets too hot to be out here. So much bird song! We’re due for another day of temperatures in the 90s before storms roll in. Actually, while I’ve been sitting here, the sky has clouded over. But there’s a nice breeze and my goodness, I love the sound of birds.

Yesterday, I watered twice, simply because it was so darned hot and humid.

I am so much happier at this time of year. Green everywhere, wildflowers popping up, bunnies, birds, groundhogs, chipmunks, my porch once again becoming an extra room. Don was out here with me for a while this morning and I said to him – yes, money is extremely tight, the world has gone mad, we’ll be paying this mortgage for the rest of our lives – but this porch, this view, this peace we feel when we get to work and enjoy our property, that’s what we wanted and thought we’d never have. And we have it.

Here’s what is happening with my Annabelle hydrangea:

A lot of new shoots are coming up from the ground and they’re growing taller every day. I want to give them room and cut back more of the old stalks, but then I see something like this on a stalk I thought was dead:

Do I still cut some of it back to give the new shoots room to grow?

And ideas would be welcome!

We just had a wee bit of rain. One of my favorite childhood memories is sitting on folding aluminum chairs on our porch, watching the rain come in, and seeing just how long we could stay out there without getting wet.

There’s a quick little video of the Secret Garden on my IG this morning.

Stay safe.

Happy Sunday.