The Eighteen Steps, or, Oh My Aching Back

We have eighteen steps leading up to our house. Have I mentioned we live on a hill? Well, if not, we live on a hill, and a steep one at that. Every year someone finds it behooves him or her to comment, "I'll bet this driveway is fun in winter!" Yes. Yes it is, if you enjoy falling flat on your posterior.

The benefit is we'd have to have a flood of biblical proportions in order to get rain water in our basement. For every silver lining, there is a cloud.

Last weekend I weeded the planting area next to the steps in front of the house, in preparation, and this weekend I planted petunias, alternating lovely, bright purple ones and red ones with white edges. They look sparse now, but will soon grow in to fill the space.

Yesterday evening, after all that planting, I could hardly walk from the pain in my back. I alternated kneeling (with thick, leather knee pads) and bending over, which I thought would be fine. Good thing a night's rest helped the back immensely or today I'd look as though I were imitating Quasimodo.

Sanctuary!

I'm afraid the quality of these photos is not very high, for which I apologize, but I took them in a hurry. I wanted to get them uploaded before work this morning, so was outside in my pajamas taking them before dressing for work. The neighbors are growing used to seeing that.

But hopefully they give you a good idea what the area looks like. I'll try to remember to take another photo, perhaps from the bottom up, once the flowers have filled in the space and don't look as bare. The last thing I want is to deprive you of the full effect after all my hard work.

Not much more planting of annuals before I'm done. The remainder of these petunias will go in some pots, and the perennials out back need some serious work to make them look other than abysmal. I have much thinning of plants and re-arranging to do.

Isn't summer supposed to be a lazy season? I think not. Makes me long to move into a town house, though between our dogs and our children I believe we'd be kicked out in short order.

Blast.