Outside

I haven't shared pictures of the outside areas of our flat yet, mostly due to it being either dark, snowing or raining every time I remember this fact! Now it's getting lighter in the evenings and when I came home from work one day it was even sunny so I took the opportunity to take a few pictures, this is the front of our flat from the gate.

This is taken from the corner to the left of the window (The bedroom window), our front door is on the left under the light. The brown door is to an under stairs space that houses the meters for us and the house above. It's quite a large space that nobody seems to use (We've not been told it's ours to use but the landlord doesn't seem to keep anything in there either) so I might ask if it would be possible for us to keep our bikes in there as long as they don't block access to read the meters, as they're taking up loads of room in the back garden. 

From the top of the steps

The flowers in the planter are just starting to come up, I want to get some more plants by our front door, and maybe even a window box under the bedroom window, as the front does look a bit bare and sad sometimes so I'd like to brighten it up a bit.

This is our back garden which now it's starting to get a bit more spring like I'm looking forward to using, it opens out from the kitchen

Under the tarpaulins are our bikes in front and the barbecue at the back, see what I mean about them taking up a lot of space?

The steps lead up to the garden for the house, the boundary between the two gardens is the steps (pretty much where Jazzie is sat in the photo below) and the hedge also forms quite a natural screen/boundary. The stairs on the right lead up to the back door to the house above, our kitchen window is the other side of the frame for the stairs and looks out pretty much straight onto their patio so in summer that might be a bit awkward! In this picture Jazzie is staring down a cat that wandered into our garden while I was taking these photos, but we actually don't seem to get too many other cats around apart from this one (I think he lives next door) and so far she hasn't gotten into any fights, she looks pretty but she's a bruiser really so other cats don't tend to come back after one showdown!

We're quite enclosed by walls but we seem to be almost south facing so we get the sun most of the day

All of the plants in these pictures apart from the ivy under the table were left by the landlords, including meercats

The table and chairs also came with the flat

I'd love to not have so much stored out here but hopefully in the summer we can take the tapaulins off and it will look a bit better! All the things in carrier bags are our old terracotta pots which I had at our second house as the garden then was gravel.

It's not a massive space but I can see us eating out here in the summer and as we seem to get a reasonable amount of sun it should be a nice place to sit out and read a book. Neither of us are exactly avid gardeners so low maintenace is better for us, but once we get some flowers and shrubs in the pots and get those tarpaulins out of the way I think it will look good.

Any suggestions of what to plant and when are welcome, so far the only plants we have that weren't left by the landlord are the terracotta pot near the door which has mint and basil in it and the ivy under the table, both of which seem to be indestructible!