May 09th, 2017

Some previous owner of this house put this pretty little fence up beside our house.  It's just two pieces of fencing sitting at right angles to each other. I believe it was intended for hiding unsightly garbage cans.  But I'm too lazy for that.  I keep the one garbage can that we actually use just outside of the utility door.  One little step outside, bag of garbage in hand, and there it is. Handy!  So the space behind this fence was seriously underutilized and filling up with tree debris. 

As it turns out, palm trees shed worse than any cat or dog I've ever owned.   It seems that there is always something falling off the darned things and some of those things are quite large.   Nearly every week, I'm toting discarded palm fronds, and shredded this'n'that, and sticky almost fruit looking mystery "stuff" up to the street for the garbage trucks (thank you Waste Management!) to take away.  Well, there was a lot of that sort of thing collecting behind this pretty little fence along with everything the wind blew  forward that was trapped in this corner.  Cleaning it out was on the gotta-do list but it was pretty far down.

Until we realized that our lovely front courtyard was starting to look like a bike shop.  Not the look I was going for.  When we moved here we had two bicycles.  I tucked them along the wall behind the furniture where it was easy for us to get to, but sort of out of the way. Then my sister, very kindly gave us her bike which she doesn't use and then Tim bought a new bike. Whoa. Ok now we have cluttered up the courtyard with double the number of bikes, so we had 4 sets of wheels encroaching on the seating area and it was a tangle actually using any of them.  Time to make some room.

Tim was the one who thought of using that previously unused space.  Great Idea!  So I went to work.  I raked for what felt like hours and found not just floral detritus, but also bricks, concrete blocks, bits of lumber, a lot of lizards and more than a few bugs. Ewww.  Once everything was cleared away and I was cleaned up and finished having the touched by a bug shudders and shakes, I moved the bikes into their new home.

Okay, okay, I didn't get rid of all of the leaves. I don't think I will ever get rid of them all, but enough for our purposes.  The bikes fit perfectly. It looks like I have them nicely corralled.  They look very happy here.

Next I turned my attention to the courtyard.  The bikes were filling so much of it that I kept moving the patio furniture further and further out into the center. It was really ridiculous.  Now I was able to push them back under the shade.  As we approach summer, that will be a bonus for sure!  Of course, now it looks a little bare.  I need to find a patio table.  Nothing fancy, this is not a fancy house, but still a place to set your iced tea glass.  I think I also need some big old pots of plants.    Not sure what else.  Up until now, I have given almost no thought to the exterior of the house other than keeping plants alive and the courtyard swept.  Must give it some thought.

Here is it and yup,  it's looking pretty nekkid.   This is where I turn to you, my very clever readers, for some ideas!  Clearly I can use all the help I can get design-wise!

I eagerly await your thoughts!