Take a "staycation" and improve your home and gardens instead of lining the pockets of some far distant city's coffers. After you have made some garden improvements, with a little flair for the exotic, you will be able to keep that feeling all year, returning to your "staycation" environs each evening after a hectic day of work. Listening to the sounds of wind chimes as breezes blowing through your own backyard bringing the wind chimes to life relieves daily stress and tensions.
Spend time improving some of the areas of your back yard, hang your wind chimes and exotic paper lanterns, and you can enjoy them for months to come. Pick an area such as your patio where garden pots can be tucked into the corner filled with some tropical plants.
First of all you need to have some shade. If you don't have a patio cover of any sort then invest in some nice size market umbrellas. They come with a stand or you can center them in a good picnic table with matching or fun random chairs. A green umbrella is universally complimentary for any garden space but they are available in a variety of colors. Go with your own color sense because now you are going to get creative. Hang wind chimes, mini Christmas lights, or red chili pepper lights under the umbrellas. Wind chimes will give musical accompaniment anytime there is a breeze and the mini lights will create a festive air.
Next pick out some great pots at the flea market. Great terracotta pots or glazed Asian pots will star with the parade of flowers that you will fill them with. Geraniums come in colors from soft pink, hot pink, bright red to orange red. Plant upright geraniums that fill the pot with color or hanging geraniums in ground pots and flowers will spill onto the ground. Let a crane gazing ball live in a couple of pots for good luck.
Pots with filled with tropical greenery will give you the feel of Hawaii, Jamaica or Bali in your own back yard. Ferns and bamboo, cannas and spikey aloes all do well in pots. Balinese bell wind chimes add exotic flavor.
Hang colorful fabric on rods along the edge of a patio cover and tie them back in loose folds with hemp or jute rope to give a mysterious, fun feeling.
Set out some rattan furniture from Ikea with colorful cushions and set lanterns on the tables with a small potted fern for focus.
You can stain concrete to a warm tawny sandstone in less than half an hour. Add a few large colorful outdoor rugs and you will tie it all together.
In this process you will increase the pleasures of staying at home and in the end spend far less than that summer vacation away. When it is over you still have more to show for it than some photos and memories. At the end of a day of exploring local sights or just wandering in your nearest downtown district as though you were a tourist, afterward hanging windchimes you've discovered in a local garden shop on a singing windchimes display, you return to your very own garden to enjoy the rejuvenated backyard that you worked so hard to create.
| Price : $59.99
