Tea pots

I pinned this image on Pinterest a long time ago -- I loved the little teapots marching down the steps:

But I've been trying to focus on the plants and not accents and decorations.  This past weekend, Dale and I went to some garage sales, looking for some large pots for some of my agaves, and one sale we came upon had "all you can fit into a bag for a buck" and there were two really pretty teapots on the table.  OK, two for a buck (along with some assorted other weird items!), so I picked them up.  And darned if I didn't find another one for a dollar later. So that's fate, and I can't help it now.

Today we went to the dollar store and picked up some brackets and I hung the three of them on the wall over my creeping fig.  They look a little lonely right now, but I know I'll be finding more and more of them.

I ran chain through the spout, and then around the handle.

Because there's no drainage, I chose plants that could take some poor soil condition (and filled the bottom with pebbles and shards to help with drainage).

I love this bunny teapot!  I had to brush the leaves aside so you could see the bunnies.

I put an African violet in this one.

I want this wall to be full of teapots in a row, so I'll keep adding them until I get a nice lineup like in the inspiration picture above!

In other yardwork, we visited my brother Matt and his wife Lisa over the weekend, and they gave us a bunch of plants - I forgot to take pictures of their yard - it's a tropical paradise!  They have an incredibly private sloped lot with a waterfall that runs down the whole slope.  They also have tons of hummingbirds, and they gave us some good tips to attract hummingbirds to our yard.  So we're excited about getting started with that, but first we had to plant all those gifts they gave us:

 

Some groundcover, "candy apple" Dorotheanthus bellidiformis - I want this in the front yard but it's getting started here, along with a pygmy palm. Ignore the dying grass in the background.

Some agave attenuatas, which I really am excited about!

 

And even though they look kind of sad right now, a row of banana trees.  We also replanted the cannas here - we needed these banana trees to block the view of the house two doors down, or we won't be able to run out to the dryer (in the garage) in our underwear!   We planted a few more banana trees in the "holding zone" behind the garage, too.  

While we were on a yardwork roll, we also finished cutting the ivy out of the curb strip. Dale fired up the chainsaw and cut it like it was a sheetcake!

 

And then he fired up the rototiller and got the roots pulled up.  There was also some grass along the last foot of the area, so we tilled that up too. 

 We got the area raked and leveled with all the roots and grass removed, and it's ready for us to plant a low-maintenance plan.  We haven't decided what, yet, but I have seen a few yards with great plants.  Often, it seems like 'low maintenance' and 'low water' means it looks like a desert, so we are looking for things that look full and nice but still don't use a lot of water.  Probably not a lot of prickly things, either, since this is where people have to park and get out of their cars when they visit.   We don't want to have to meet folks at the door with a box of band-aids!

It was a busy holiday weekend - we'd planned on relaxing this afternoon at the movies, but Dale got called in to work, so we'll try to make that next weekend (unless we have more projects on the horizon!)