Window Boxes and Trim

Did you know that there’s a disadvantage to living on a property with nearly 200 rose bushes? (I know, it’s hard to imagine.)

Winter.

Roses need to be pruned heavily in the wintertime in order to bloom abundantly through the rest of the year. This means that from January through March, the front of our home has looked rather depressing. (I know that most of the country is completely flower-less from November through April, which I’ll acknowledge as even more depressing, but in LA the spring bulbs start coming up in January!)

Not long after I mentioned that window boxes might be a nice way to add winter color, my father-in-law happened to find three out at the neighbors’ curb. They were a little damaged and mismatched, but they were free and they showed up at the perfect time! They’re also a near perfect fit for our widest window, amazingly enough.

We sanded, primed and painted them. My father-in-law added brackets to the wall and they were ready to go!

Before.

After. Way after.

I love them!

Now, as you can see, the roses are back in bloom alongside the window box flowers. The addition of some window trim, as well as the untimely death of my first batch of flowers (ranunculus!) while we were on a quick trip, meant the boxes were slow to reach full potential. Meanwhile, the lovely roses came back into bloom and surrounded them.

I decided that this was as good a time as any to add some trim to our naked windows. I love trim and think most ugly buildings (like all the apartments in our neighborhood) would be vastly improved by adding it. Greg kindly obliged and picked up, cut and installed some trim around our two windows. We have a wood front door — complete with its own matching wood trim — making it hard to match everything on the wall. Yet even without being completely matchy, I think the white window trim is a great improvement.

I hadn’t anticipated how much I’d enjoy seeing the flower box flowers from inside our house, since our dining room table sits right beside this window. They make the sun-filled living/dining area an even nicer spot to work in!