In which I Belatedly Follow Mary's Advice

Sorry for the hiatus, gardening fans.  There have been things going on - nothing momentous or even particularly interesting, just non-blogging things.

But I wanted to give you a look at the latest garden upgrade.  A couple of years ago, a Facebook friend (my high school friend Mary) suggested that I look for plastic tiles designed to look like wood, on the theory that anything would be more attractive than the concrete slab that is my garden floor.

I filed the idea away under "Things I Might Get Around To Eventually," and this spring, I decided that "eventually" was "now."

I found my tiles of choice at Home Depot.  I thought about wooden tiles, but the wooden tiles are subject to tannin leaching.  What does that mean?  It means that the natural preservatives in the wood (the tannins) can stain the concrete underneath.  And while the concrete is pretty ugly anyway, it doesn't belong to me, it belongs to the building.  So I went for plastic, which will not stain.

Here are my tiles. 

Water can run underneath them, so they don't create a drainage problem.  They snap together like Lego, so it was a pretty simple job to snap them together on the ground. 

Here's the job partially done.

And here is my completed deck.  It's not perfect - the rest of the ugly slab is still there, though I suppose I could cover the rest of it too, for a price.  But it's a start.

Anyway, thanks, Mary, for planting the idea in my brain.  I think it looks reasonably nice, don't you?  Next up: some kind of tiny tool shed so I can finally get the potting soil off the table.

Next time, we'll talk about what's thriving, what's surviving, and what's still dead.