Doing outdoors things to a house was never my forte. I always thought I would want a beautiful, old victorian fixer upper when I was a kid. And I probably would so long as I could pay other people to take care of it. The truth is doing outdoor planting and yard work, painting, cleaning, you name it-is an epic pain-in-the-ass and I have nothing but respect for people who keep their own gardens and house up. It takes so much time, work and money. I can scarcely wrap my head around it.

I live in a town house. It's a pretty nice place if a little boring on the outside. The inside was boring as well but is slowly(and I do mean slowly) coming to life. There's never enough time, money or sometimes even desire to do all the stuff to make a place more than a storage box where you sleep. Plus, I think my boyfriend would live in a the barest, most minimalist house he could forever if I was not here. I just can't do that. So include time in to convincing him to do stuff also makes everything move a lot slower. But since I am home the overwhelming majority of my time particularly these last couple of years my desire to do things to make the space special and unique is on my mind a lot these days.

I decided to attempt a garden on one of our two decks this year. It was going well but the truth is the weather here is very temperamental and makes part of summer really miserable. I planted bee and bird as well as butterfly friendly plants and they have actually attracted more of these critters. A few other things have gone wrong but when it's gone right it's been very nice.