my patio pots and bakers racks in 2006

I found some photos of the pots I made up in May of 06, and thought some of you might like to see them.

I have a big cement patio in an "L" of a white vinyl-sided house. Obviously this is not my "dream patio". . . One year i spotted 3 bakers racks on clearance at Target at the end of the season, and immediately bought all three. They help break up the expanse of white siding.

There is a little sidewalk that goes around a corner of the two-story part of the house to the back garage door. In that corner I placed a little wooden rack I found at the local garden center.

In the years we decide to go all-out with our annuals in containers, I go to the bedding greenhouse and buy the plants, go to Sam's and buy potting mix, and set up a folding table as a work center on the patio, and do all the potting up. I like to place the empty pots on the bakers racks first, then start the potting up. The whole operation takes several afternoons of shopping and potting, and then we are tied to daily watering and deadheading all summer, of course. (Luckily DH does most of it with just a little grumbling.)

The first photo is from the day I was doing the potting.

By the way, I learned the hard way to put the flats of annuals on the grass, and the work table on the patio, not vice versa. If I stand in the same place in the grass all afternoon, the grass underfoot gets smushed!

I'll keep posting photos. Here is another one from that same "potting-up" day, which gives you a broader view of the back of the house.

(The perennials-in-waiting have been moved off the patio onto the grass, so that they are out of the way of the potting.)

This message was edited Jun 8, 2009 9:45 AM

Next come some photos from a couple weeks later.

I am dismayed I have no photos from later in the summer after the plants have reached larger size. I'll post a few more photos which show the pots a couple weeks after they were made up.

here's the 3rd bakers rack

And I add some pots scattered on the cement.

The little wooden rack around the corner is in a shadier site, and it has pansies painted on it, so i potted up some. . . . pansies!

Here's what was really going on in the yard that day!

In case you are curious: Recent photo of the stump-grinding area.

Beautiful, especially when compared with a stump!