Another of my fav. places....

Good morning all ♥

Today is another cleanup day, try to get my art room back to looking like an art room, purge a bunch of papers and get my butt over to the thrift shop to give them some of our unwanted treasures. Oh yes, I also need to print out a bunch of thank-you notes for those folks who sent sympathy cards..and pick up more penny wrappers from the bank ( my mom collected pennies as long as I can remember ). And of course there's the boxes of non-sentimental but valuable items that will probably be hanging around for awhile until I figure out what to do with them, oop ack ! ---don't like clutter but it's everywhere right now !

Anyway, the photos above are of our deck. I love making a tea, grabbing a seat and watching the birds. The first pic. was taken today and shows you exactly what I was looking at while having breakfast.
The forested area behind our home is called 'common land'. We live in a modular home park which is situated on Reserve land. The 'common land' behind our place and others can be used by everyone ( I think, hope I'm right ), but, for the most, is usually untouched. Every once in awhile our son and I enjoy pushing through the foliage to get to the tiny stream and just enjoy feeling 'far away' --even though we're only 2 minutes from the house.
When it comes time for us to move I am praying that we will find a place with a bit of forest. We love sitting outside and listening to the birds, watching the cranes nest, laughing at the crazy squirrels, etc...very relaxing.
**I like people, but when it comes to a backyard, I really have to have my privacy. Having a bit of forest back there really helps to take away from the constant noise and stress us humans put out.

I put together a trio of our deck. We'll be re-staining it again this year and I look forward to adding more flowers. The red 'screen' was a Freecycle find and put up because we once had a neighbor who never bothered to ask if she could come over, she just did and didn't care if we were having breakfast, or wanted some quiet time, etc...very rude. The screen has proven to be very handy, from the neighbor lol :), to hanging items, to hiding the lovely recycling receptacles ( you can see in one of the pics. ).

The adirondack chair was a free 'find' from a friend. I painted it white and adorned it's armrests with potted plants. Sometime soon I'll be adding a flowery pink and white striped seat ( just simply wrapping some foam with part of a shower curtain ).

The last pic. in the trio shows a part of our side garden. We have two large chive plants, some lemon balm ( looking quite sad nowadays, I think it needs a good pruning ), a large lily plant ( blooms yellow ), beautiful pink rhodendron, Forget-Me-Nots ( little blue cuties ), a large plant that has these interesting flamingo looking 'flowers' which smell sooooo nice, a clematis and a bunch of other flowering plants. There's also a fig tree which, so far, looks like it's going to produce quite a nice crop.
In behind you can make out some of our neighbors garden --she's not the nosy one ! We have decided that a covering of clematis and other vines would be quite lovely on the chain link fence, so she has already planted a couple and we're really looking forward to seeing the results.

My husband installed some blue lighting just under the canopy where we sit, it looks quite nice at night, and once we purchase another mosquito repellant light, then we can enjoy the evening outdoors.

Now time for me to get to work ! ♥