Saturday Snapshot: Spring has Sprung!

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at Alyce's blog, At Home With Books.

Last Saturday I was finally able to get around to planting flowers around our patio and hanging baskets of flowers in all of our usual spots. Now I can't wait for another couple of months to pass so the flowers will have really filled in around the patio -- that's why I love impatiens, because they do a great job making their presence known, even if they have to be planted annually (though we usually do have them come back sporadically every year from the previous Spring's plantings). We also decided to splurge and ordered new wicker chair/ottoman set for the patio and it arrived just in time for me to include it in the pictures. Looking forward to getting lots of use out of it this summer -- yay for my improved warm-weather reading spot!

I ended up having to buy new pots for our planter this year. I loaded them with petunias, which I have had the most success actually keeping alive through the hot summer months here in Georgia, haha.

For hanging baskets, I chose a smaller variety of petunias...

I was happy to be able to get the hanging baskets in different color combinations. I would really love to have fuchsias in the baskets but we haven't had a lot of luck with those in the past. In the background below, you can see our clematis that continues to thrive... Shouldn't be too long before I have lots of blooms to take pictures of!

Sorry the next picture is a bit over-exposed, but as it rained all day yesterday, I had to wait until this morning to get any pictures and we get morning sun on our patio. This is our other line of impatiens along the house. By the time summer is in full swing, as long as they don't get eaten, we should have a very full row of flowers, just about completely covering up the mulch and probably close to a foot high.

Here's the new patio set! It was a little bigger than I realized it was going to be, so we had to arrange it a little differently than I had planned, but I love it! (Notice the jacked-up blinds in the window on the right? Someone was trying to peek outside while I took pictures...)

Here's our entire patio. The first summer after we got married, we expanded it down the back of the house with the paving stones. Our old sitting chairs have become chairs for our small table that came with four rather flimsy folding-style chairs. These actually seat us up at a better position for the rare times we eat out there and we still have the other chairs should we need the extra seating for any reason. It worked out well!

I'm thinking about trying to get some kind of fun extra hanging lights to use out there when we want to sit in the evenings this summer. We just have the one porch light nestled in the nook as you can see in the picture above, and it doesn't really reach the lounge area at the end. I'd also like to buy some wind chimes, but sometimes it gets SO windy where we're positioned up on our hill that I'm afraid they'll either blow away themselves or drive us crazy. We'll see...

Now I'm off to check out your pictures and enjoy the rest of the day. Happy Saturday!