Movin' on : bin bed redo

The bush cuke vines are finished.  Oh, there were still blossoms, but the leaves are pitted, rusty, brittle and brown.  Time to pull them out.  They did a good job for 2 months.  (BTW of the 2 varieties, Bush Champion are my fave and will appear in next year's lineup.)

So I picked all the stubby cukes that were large enough to slice for salads.

Then rearranged things so I could use those special mums that I showcased on the Flower Page link from last post to 'season up' the front of the deck.  (Observant readers will notice 2 other new players there on the right side of the bench.  During that Home Depot trip I was seduced by their 2/$10 perennial sale and brought home a Nanho Blue butterfly bush and a Blue Bomb veronica. )

Sometimes the most innocuous thing leads to something terrific.  Like putting that ReStore bench I got last year right in front of the deck.  It needed to be put somewhere and other than putting it away behind the shed, the spot in front of the deck was the only other option that didn't involve heavy lifting.  Well, I'd always wanted plants there, but then I didn't want to block access to under the deck (for various reasons).  The bench turned out to be just the ticket.  The bins (originally for spring greens), morphed into a cucumber experiment and now sport some sale mums.

Meanwhile, to screen the emptiness beneath the bench, I lucked into  a $3/tray of late season short salvia (half dead poor things).  With a little water and fertilizer, they recovered and are doing great growing just under the bench.  Honestly, in the 10 summers I've been here, the birdbath bed has never been this successful, drought notwithstanding!

So tell me, readers.

What little something have YOU done in the garden that eventually took on a life of it's own?  Something you would never have thought of initially, but now that it's turned out so wonderfully that you unabashedly take full credit for the idea.  ;-)   Fess up....