New Arbor and Blue Tailed Skink, A Double Post

It's Monday and as usual, I have been busy searching for blues and taking pictures of my latest project at home. I will start with my Met Mon post and for today, I would like to share how our arbor project is going. But first, let me thank Susan at http://betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com/ for sponsoring another MM event. It would be fun to visit her and check out what she is sharing with us today and then visit everyone on her list of participants also.

This part of the yard is on the left side of the house in the back. It is visible as you drive up to the driveway before turning right into the garage. This is how it used to be.

It is a sloping yard and down there at the end is a creek, where I never go to because as you can see, it is a very dense area (even after we had it cleaned, it grew right back) and I am terrified of snakes. What I want to do is gradually clean it up again, remove the big bushes, create a clean path and plant smaller flowering plants.

We bought a big arbor, it's wide with seats and it came in 2 portions. Shown here are 2 men who put it together.

Then, John and I removed the stepping stones inside the arbor and dug out the grass. We bought materials that we thought we would need: bricks, sand, lava rocks, ground cover fabric and small pebbles.

We laid the lava rocks first and then the small pebbles, then the sand, ground cover, more sand and finally the bricks and sand over them. It was a lot of work and the bricks were really heavy but we're happy with how it turned out.

I planted climbing jazmines at both ends of the arbor and planted Irish moss in between the stepping stones. I can't wait for the jazmines to cover all the way to the top.

As you can see, I am not done planting yet. We laid stepping stones on the left side of the bottom brick pavement in a curving pattern, which I think is more interesting than going straight down. I plan to plant more Irish moss in between them too.

You can see the 2 levels of brick pavements here. I planted rosemarie, some lavenders and a bird of paradise. I have more to plant but we had a bad storm today so I was unable

to work outside. Here's another view.

You can see the 2 levels of the bricks here.

A view from the driveway. I added flowered seat pads on the benches.

Wouldn't it be relaxing just to sit there, chat with friends, read a book or drink tea? It's a great area for resting when tired from working in the garden too.

A view from the other side. Please forgive the mess. I took the pictures after the storm so there are broken tree branches and leaves everywhere on the yard, so please just ignore the mess.

It's not completely done yet but it is getting there and it looks a lot better now, I think. What do you think?

It is also Blue Monday, which is hosted by Smiling Sal at http://smilingsally.blogspot.com/. Go visit Sally and check out all the fantastic blues circulating in Blogland.

Since I shared outdoor photos for Met Mon., let's just stay out and I"ll show you this interesting looking lizard I saw on our porch. The colors are so pretty. The tail is deep cobalt blue and the body has black and yellow stripes. I jumped when I first saw it cause I thought it was a snake.

It was the first time I ever saw this colorful lizard so I researched it on the internet and found out it is called a "skink". It is not poisonous.

Do you see its deep blue tail under the bamboo?

I hope you enjoyed my post today. Your suggestions on how I can make it better are always welcomed. Thanks for stopping by. And thanks to Sally and Susan for hosting these 2 fun Monday events.