A Change of Color

Spring has come to Sacramento and I took advantage of our beautiful, sunny and low 70s weather and did some painting over the long President's Day weekend.

I always forget what a pain painting can be.  And the older I get the more literal I mean that.  My quads have been on inactive duty since around October so after just a few hours of squatting, stretching, bending, and climbing I was feeling like rubber.

Although I'm a big fan of color - who isn't - I'm also becoming a disciple of the school that says gardens should have a limited color palette.  To that end, I'm trying to move toward the classic brown, white, and green color combo.

That meant that my red and white shed would need a latex bath of Behr's Sweet Molasses.
 

This is the view from our back porch.  The shed dominates the scene in all weathers.  While many guests (and at least one member of my family) have remarked about how quaint it looks, I found myself wanting to notice it less often.  I want the plants to be the star when they grow in.  

After a couple days, this is what I ended up with:

It still holds some visual weight, but I think that's more of a result of its size than its color.  

Growing up on either side of the window are climbing roses that will someday cover a majority of the shed in profuse white blooms for months on end.  I'm looking forward to that.

One more thing: I had a poetry teacher that used to tell us that we needed to know the rules before we could break the rules. Well, if my rule is a color palette of green, brown, and white, I broke that rule with abandon when I let my daughter pick out the paint color for our Adirondack chairs.  

We went from weathered (which I liked) but dirty (which no one liked)

To this eye-assaulting pop of color:

I really wanted to paint these a matching brown, but since this was a family project, I deferred to my daughter's choice.  One of the best things about painting, and gardening, is that you can always change your mind.