Spring Has Sprung.

Spring has been my favorite season since the summer of 2003. Up until that point summer had my unending devotion. I suppose being pregnant THE ENTIRE SUMMER had a little something to do with that. Now I simply can’t take the heat and humidity of the summer. Spring though? We’ve become BFFs. I feel renewed and optimistic, which is a feeling I wholeheartedly welcome after the past year I’ve had.

In an effort to conserve our gas consumption, I’ve been riding the bus to work in the morning. I must say at first i was a bit nervous, but its been rather pleasant. It’s amazing what you miss when you drive everywhere. Things like when you notice that a building has been torn down. A building you have zoomed past a million times, too harried and rushed on your way to your next what-ever. But now you can not, for the life of you remember what that building was

I love being downtown watching all the people shuttling around trying to get to work/school/what-have-you. And the people watching…oh the people watching!

The beautiful spring weather has also caused me spend all my work breaks walking the parking lot , which is where I took these gorgeous shots.

It’s been so lovely being outside in the sunny-cool-crisp morning that I’m already wistfully stashing the memories for when its hot and sticky. Or worse yet, cold and snowy.

It is then that I have to tell myself to slow down. Enjoy the moment while it is still here.

So how about you? What is your favorite thing about spring? What have you done differently lately?

 

How would your dream backyard look?

That was the question posed to me by one of my twitter followers friends.

Truth be told, I hadn’t really thought about it, considering that this is the wasteland that is my current reality {Horror of Horrors!}:

The lonely little patch above next to my Mommy-Cruiser is the proposed site of my garden.

Until now, my backyard and front yard have just been places to banish the Churrens when they get too rowdy or are getting too much screen time.
Yes, I’ve seen all the HGTV shows devoted to prettying-up the outside. However, when it’s cold more than it is warm where you live, you spend most of your time indoors.  With the onset of spring and my ambitious gardening plans, I guess now is as good time as any to start dreaming planning.

Given my limited backyard space, I would love for my vegetable gardening to look like this:

photo courtesy of Martha Stewart.

I am a sucker for container gardening. It just seems so “a place for everything, everything in its place” organized.

This one gives me a reason to drink wine collect boxes. I may finally get up the nerve to ask Sam’s Club for some.

photo courtesy of LLH Designs.

If I didn’t have a garden, and I had the space and unlimited landscaping $$$, this is how I would want my backyard to look {Swoon!}:

AfroMartha can dream, right? Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerikoegel

My family loves to play board and card games. The kids and Hubs are partial to Monopoly and UNO. I LOVE Phase 10. I could see us right over there in the back left corner getting down! Add a pitcher of Lemonade, a bucket of popcorn, and we’ll be all set! (Disclosure: the preceeding links do lead to my amazon affiliates ID)

Speaking of a bucket of popcorn, this looks fun!

Photo courtesy of www.miss-design.com

How about movie night in the backyard?! How fun is that! Hey wait a minute, this set up looks almost like my front yard (without the all the ugly).

This is how my front yard currently looks:

This might actually do-able in our front yard!  Would it be ghetto wrong to set up the front yard for movie night? I’m not sure

Landscape etiquette questions aside, I now have some inspiration to get out and stock up on wine boxes, and search for an old movie projector cute-up my outdoors

How about you? What would your outdoors look like? What are your outdoors plans for the upcoming spring and summer?