Here we are. I was distracted by the first of the month being a Friday. It was a double-good day - Friday and payday!

It's still spring, but here it is really hot, and it's beginning to be the time of year when I have to go to bed earlier so I can get up in the morning before it's too hot to walk the dogs or work outside. It's the time of year when I set the air conditioning so it cools the house enough that I can stand it, but not so much that my bill goes through the stratosphere.

It's the time of year when I want parts of my yard to be like "rooms" extended from the house; I took some outdoor cushions and put them on my wrought iron bench last night and sat in the dark looking at the woods across the road and listening to the bugs. Not noisy yet like it will be soon, when the cicadas hit full-voice.

Does anyone who participates here have a "garden room" in the yard, a place where you can sit out and enjoy the coolest part of the day? My back patio has the dogs, so it isn't always restful to sit there, though if I did it more often they would become accustomed. Do you have any sleeping porches, screened in sun porches, places that are part house/part outside? Or have you always thought you'd like to create one?

This is a declutter thread, but this is also a place where we share ideas and successes of various sorts, including our forays into the construction trades. Though I haven't signed up for Pinterest, I see friend's "pinned" items show up on facebook, and several times I've seen ideal garden or patio setups that people have seen and copied to that site. If I stumble across any good ones I'll link to them (I do have some of this taped into a notebook I use for keeping track of work and vendors.)

SRS