It’s pretty much almost warm outside, and I hear it’s spring, so enough interiors!

So, I like plants. They’re good about taking our useless carbon dioxide and handing us back some oxygen, they’re colorful, and they usually smell good. Unfortunately, they can be pretty expensive, as can their containers. For the pots above, I used plain old terra cotta pots at about 65 cents each and painted them with semi-gloss latex enamel paint I had leftover from painting the bathroom and kitchen walls. Another neat little trick I picked up from Martha Stewart:

Tin cans, with labels removed, can be painted in the same manner as the pots. Drill a small hole in the bottom for drainage. Naturally, hers look better than mine, but I think my rust spots add character. In the original magazine article, where I got this idea, I’m 80% sure the website version’s instruction for inserting a glass in the tin to prevent rust didn’t exist, but I would have been too lazy to do it anyway. Yes, the bathroom in our last house was painted this blue. No, I don’t know what I was thinking.

Only slightly more expensive than free is Ikea’s Billig pots (whose name makes me think of Alice in Wonderland) – though they’re shown sans plant on the website, they actually come with little plants. Fifty cents for plant and pot, and many little varieties from which to choose.

We also wanted to plant the “front yard”, and by front yard I mean the city-owned strip of dirt separating the sidewalk from the street. But to plant that area would have been too expensive to buy individual flower and plants, so how did we do it? Seeds! Yes, seeds are pretty cheap, but they take a long time to grow, so most people just go ahead and plant plants that are already grown so they can see exactly what things will look like once they get planted. We’re more adventurous than that, so with a rough sketch of what we wanted where, we tilled the soil, dug holes, and broadcast our seed. Well, I watched while Alex did the work.

The nasturtiums are doing quite well, and hopefully we’ll see some poppies and other wildflowers soon.

But what happened to the thermometer? Out back, I repainted the back wall, which was orange-ish peach and hot pink before, and rearranged some furniture. Now all I need is a party.