Doing it on the Deck
Appropriate that we saved the outdoor living spaces for the beginning of the Labor Day weekend, when some of us may be entertaining with end of summer bar-b-ques.
I don’t think we’ll be doing much of that here in Arkansas, as we’re supposed to see the remnants of the hurricane by tomorrow, which they say will bring us several inches of much needed rain through Saturday.
Still, when the weather permits, maybe Sunday or Monday, I will start by cleaning up the tomato and pepper planters from the Party Deck.
My vegetables were in their final days when I left for a conference last week and without water, it pretty well did them in.
I typically will remove the remainder of the plant and go ahead and turn the soil, which will expose any larvae or bugs to the coming cooler winter. We then place the planters under the deck until the very anticipated spring planting season.
Dale also needs to do a power wash on the deck and possibly restain. He has been trying to stain the house all summer, but it got too hot too early to do it in the spring and remained so throughout most of the summer.
Our metal lawn furniture on both the Party Deck and covered porch on The Belle Writer’s Studio also needs a new coat of green spray paint.
The covered front porch on Our Little House is good, as we don’t typically give it a good cleaning until after the pollen covers it in the spring.
What outdoor living spaces do you have and what do you do to clean them or prepare them for the upcoming winter?
Our deck desperately needs to be power washed. We also need to stain ours too. We've been looking at using a new product that's pretty much a heavy-duty paint with sand in it–Restore. It pretty much makes a lackluster deck into something like trax. I'm planning on trying it sometime soon. I better hurry, though, the leaves are already starting to fall.
Let us know what you think of it!
You're always so organized and I'm always so not. I just didn't have time to get to my flower bed this summer — it's a mess.
LOL, Jane. I'm pretty organized, except when I'm not.
Your deck looks so charming and inviting. Would love to see it in person someday.
You're welcome to pop over from Texas anytime, Ruth!
You are way more organized that I ever will be. I hope you will rub off on me. If you do, my family will thank you.
If I didn't adopt more organization here, I would go mad with the clutter, Alisa!
It is definitely time to empty my flower planters and clean them up for next year. But I'm faced with a lot of work to get done this week, the paying kind, so it will just have to wait.
When we have a lot of paying work, many things around our houses have to wait, don't they?
You're so organized and way ahead of me. Usually we wait until it's too late and suffer with the ravages of the season before.
The rabbits and squirrels have enjoyed what was left of the tomato plants. The pepper plants are still growing.
I haven't yet accepted that winter will be coming
My husband gets irritated with me when I talk about being tired of the hot, humid weather. He hates winter. But it's inevitable!
We have a patio out back, with succulents in the planters. It's relatively maintenance free, which is really nice.
I may not do the veggies next year, we haven't had a whole lot of success with them and it is costly to get them in the pots and then yes, there is the clean up in the fall.
We have a deck and a front porch. We usually waterproof the deck in early fall each year.
Always a good idea, particularly if you live someplace where you have harsh winters with snow and ice.
Love this blog! Just stumbled on it, my husband is also from Arkansas and we're currently in northern CA
Thanks, Marie, I'm glad you found us! Welcome to our Living Large community!
We don't do much to prepare for winter in Southern California. Just cover the patio furniture and the air conditioner unit. I've been trying to stain the deck at our Little House to Be which is in the high desert all year. It's been too hot for the stain. Hopefully, it will cool down soon. I have to try to get to it before it gets too cold for the stain (we do get some snow up there).
Good luck with that, Carol. I will hope for you a perfect fall to allow you to get some of your chores done.