Last weekend arrived and we – shockingly – had very little going on. No trips out of town. No visitors. No big plans. The weather was glorious, so we spent much of the weekend in the backyard working on small projects. It was so nice to be productive while outside soaking up all that sunshine.

And now I am loving our backyard even more. I want to enjoy as much of it as I can before the bugs come out of hibernation and the heat chases us back inside.

I don’t think I ever posted pictures of the pergola we put in last summer, but here it is, complete with lights and a fan for when the hot weather does arrive.

We sat underneath it Saturday night with good friends and used our new fire pit to roast marshmallows. Yum. 

Sunday we discovered that the pergola provides a perfect place to hang a swing. We received this swing as a wedding gift and used it all the time on the porch of our last house. This house doesn’t have a swinging porch, but now it has a swinging pergola! The swing was looking rough after years in the damp, musty storage building. Amazing what some paint will do. I ordered a new seat cushion and can’t wait for it to arrive!

This bench was another wedding gift. I mistakenly put it under a tree in our backyard thinking shade would be ideal, but the birds had other ideas. It was so covered in bird poop that I wouldn’t go near it, much less sit in it. But a thorough scrubbing this weekend, followed by a fresh coat of paint makes me happy to sit here (but not under a tree, no way). We even had lots of good help from painter Camille.

 
The pergola also proved to be a perfect spot for our flagpole (Go Dawgs!) and makes the backyard feel distinctly “ours.”

And now that the weather is improving, I’m happy that Camille’s playhouse has become a frequent base of operations for playdates with her new neighbor friends.

Do we ever have to go back inside?