I'm almost too busy to blog.

I got temporarily waylaid by one of those family betrayal situations that sends me into a full-on retreat. I don't want to talk about it now because I'm still feeling pretty bitter and just want to focus on the good in my life. So back to the house...

I can't even let a forlorn mailbox just be. The bent and rusty wrought iron post is firmly cemented into the ground so it would have been excessively difficult to replace.

But it could be camouflaged. I spray-painted the post black, detached the newspaper box (because I don't subscribe to our right-leaning local paper), bought a new mailbox and even painted the silver flag on it red. Seriously, everyone knows mailbox flags should be red. I planted a gorgeous pink mandevilla vine I found on sale and then discovered that it is a tender perennial and unlikely to survive the winter in my zone. I'm treating it as an annual and on the other side of the post I planted a purple clematis so it can be establishing itself through the summer and fall for next year.

On the deck, the former owner had an enormous cement planter with a boxwood in it. A boxwood. What a bland, uninteresting choice. I do not care for boxwoods and I felt no remorse as I chopped it down and dug out the roots.

It now houses a deliciously sweet-smelling gardenia bush. When I was packing up the basement I discovered I still had a bag of coconut husk bedding left over from when I had my pet python, Mike. Rather than toss it, I used it as mulch for some of the potted plants. It was the perfect place for my grandfather's smiling boddhisatva statue.

This yard is largely devoid of planting beds other than the ones immediately in front of the house and this one on the side around a dogwood tree. The previous owner wasn't a gardener and the bed was insanely over-grown.

I spent the better part of an afternoon digging up weeds from that one bed and chatting with my neighbor on the side of me. He is retired and tried to convince me that the tradition in the neighborhood was for anyone who moved in to work on their next-door neighbor's yard. This pile is the result of my labor. One of the results, that is. The other?

A lovely case of poison ivy. I thought I was being careful but when I stood up at one point, I saw where I had been kneeling a healthy crop of the wicked weed. My heart sunk because I'd been in that spot for about 45 minutes.

Oh yeah, it got me. Every part of me that wasn't covered by shorts, a tank top, sneakers and gloves has a rash on it. The exposure was over a week ago, and I've just now reached a point where it is starting to get a little better.

On the upside, I do have this beautifully weeded bed. I will likely transplant some of the things in it to more suitable locations and plan to expand the bed considerably. In the meantime, I've added some pink coneflowers. You see my next door neighbor's yard? He's a gardener, and I've been studying the way he's landscaped so I can design something that flows from it. More on that later - I'll be bouncing back and forth between indoor and outdoor projects.