My husband and I both decided to not do a vegetable garden on our deck this year. We did decide that we’d plant some flowers, though!

Speaking of vegetable gardens – we still had a good number of old buckets of dirt – and weeds – on the deck. Which depressed me every time I looked at them (sorry no pics they were way too ugly)! Monday morning, I decided to buy a bag of potting soil, grab the hedge shears (more about them in a bit, they are an important plot point), my work gloves and go scorched earth on the old mess on the deck. So I started to schlep those 40 pound buckets down the steps and to the wooded area behind our condo. I cleared out a little “path” for me in the wooded area so that I could dump the dirt without getting tangled in branches.

My husband had tried to say we didn’t need to buy “new” dirt – and that we could reuse the old dirt from the pots. I thought that sounded like more work than it was worth – and who wants old weeds in new plantings? So I made sure to sneak out before he woke up to buy the dirt so he wouldn’t try to stop me. He really wasn’t bothered that I did it – and actually thanked me for doing all of that heavy, dirty work.

“I just did the prep work for you,” I said to him. His job would be to put the flowers we’d bought into the pots. And clean up after himself (he did an OK job with that second task, LOL)!

Here’s our attempt at beautification on our deck overlooking the communal “back yard” (we live in condo):