Pool Surround

Sure enough - I have prepped and primed molding waiting for two coats of white paint in the dressing room but of course, anything, -any-thing- sounds more fun and is a lot more interesting to do than, you know, painting trim.

Since it seems that I have caught the gardening bug, most of my latest endeavors have been aimed at the yard. There were certain areas that had me itching to do something about them. Case in point: the area around our pool. Last year, I whipped up our little  patio area from pavers found all over the yard, some edging and a couple of bags of pea gravel, and it has held up beautifully and provided us with a nice spot to sit outside in our back yard.

This year, during the big clean-up of the pool when we emptied it out completely and pushed it back about two feet, we ended up with a patio that felt more spacious and less closed in by the pool, but it also left us with a pretty bare spot of dirt between the pool and the patio.

See? That's really nothing worth looking at. An above ground pool is really and truly an eye sore but the benefits definitely outweigh that particular drawback.

One day (this weekend), however, I'd had enough of the crummy looks and decided to just do something about it. After a quick trip to the orange box, I returned with a small car load of marble chips and an armful of plants. I choose to go with Liriope and Ferns for some hardy planst that can deal with the poor soil, partial shade and the abuse they'd experience in those particular spots.

[Six bags later ...]

I alternated my plants, added a stepping stone to get to the pump for easy filter changes and clean feet and then covered everything with the pretty, sparkly, white marble chunks.

So. much. better.

This is much nicer to look at already, and I might even have an idea to ...ahem, prettify the big blue menace at some point.

After I was done and I began to coral the odds and ends we keep on the patio (bugspray, sunscreen, skimmer, etc.), I grabbed an old wire windowbox, zippy-tied it to the fence right between grill and pool and used that instead. It had never worked as an actual planter, not holding enough moisture to keep plants alive baking in the Florida sun, but it had found a new calling.

It's perfect!

No water can pool in there and provide breeding space for mosquitos (they are bad enough as it is already - no need to help them populate the world even more!), yet it holds our patio essentials nicely and works great as a holder for the skimmer with its long handle.

Sooo .... what to tackle next?