The Wicker District

One of the projects I've been mulling over for awhile is turning our little patch of grass into a family play area.

My first step was to go to a nursery to buy some mosquito-repelling plants. I bought several bunches of what I thought was lemongrass, but now that it's potted and in place I'm not so sure it is. It looks like lemongrass but doesn't smell like it. I also bought what I was told was lavender, even though it doesn't look or smell anything like lavender to me. It's pretty and smells nice though, and it was cheap, so I bought it anyway. I also bought a couple hibiscus plants, just because the flowers were pretty.

Step two was to find some garden furniture. I have a little metal table and I wanted some wicker or rattan chairs to go with it. On the road where the children's hospital is there are several vendors of wicker and rattan furniture so we headed over there and shopped around. I saw the child's size chair first and requested two grown-up sized chairs to go with it. They were unvarnished, but the varnishing could be done in two hours. Muffin and I went home and the driver went back later in the afternoon to pick up our furniture.

The last step was to have the gardener come and do the actual repotting for me. I know it's easy enough to do myself, but I really didn't want to use my precious free time for that task so paying someone ten dollars to do it, plus move the heavy pots into place, was worth it.

Let me go back to the wicker district for a moment. There was some beautiful furniture. It was hard to resist buying more than I actually needed. I could decorate ten outdoor sitting areas. Between the chickens and all the wicker furniture, I'm really missing our big yard in Burundi. But I'm working hard to make sure Muffin has a nice outdoor play area so she doesn't miss out on the playing outside part of childhood.