Curb Appeal!

Okay guys, I need some feedback! I need some ideas.

I've spent a lot of time this spring working on the outside of the house. I think it's finally starting to look decent!

Now I need to do something about our deck. It's a great deck, was a big selling point when we bought the house. It's basically like having an extra room on our house during the summer months. I haven't gotten all my cushions and curtains out because it's been a workshop while finishing the bathroom. Tile saws are messy, but we're almost done with that portion of the project!

I spent a good amount of time figuring out how to get my morning glories to climb our wooden fence. I love the look of hanging baskets and flowers on a fence....but let's face it...those can be pricey. I'm really trying to save money this year. So I got a $1 seed packet of morning glories, wrapped the posts in string (which will hopefully get hidden quickly as the vine grows!). Then I noticed we would have a problem when trying to trim around the fence.....no way to weed eat the grass, but not the flowering vine. So I cut plastic planters and attached them to the posts with tack nails, then planted the Morning Glories inside of those. They have no bottoms, to the roots can grow down and out, but the vines won't get cut with the trimmer. Here's what I ended up with:




My new conundrum is what to do around the deck. The lattice is old and falling apart....plus it's a pretty dated look. I need things that are relatively inexpensive, and pretty maintenance free. Kind of impossible, but here's that I'm thinking. Also, I must get rid of the dirty white stone. I don't like them around the porch at all. Depending on how I'm feeling, I may scrub it up nice and use if to fill the center of the driveway. Maybe. I'm not really fond of it.

Front of the porch. The porch is off to the side of our house, this part is visible from the street. I'm thinking some more of my tall grasses here, and more daisies. I just love that stuff. Plus, one day, far into the future, we hope to have a hot tub out there. Sorry, but this deck is just MADE for a hot tub. The grasses would offer a little more privacy most of the year.


Side of the porch. This side borders on our crabby old neighbor's house and gets NO direct sunlight. I'm thinking hostas here. The big, dark green ones, with just a few of the smaller, more ornamental ones throw in.


Back of the porch. Here's where I need your help. I just don't know.



As you can see, there's really not a lot of room between the porch and the swingset. So I can't have anything (like those big green hostas) that takes up a lot of space.

This is also the part of the porch that has the most lattice. You can see under it, and it's nasty in there. They covered the small, old (brick and tile) porch with plastic before building the deck over it. The plastic is disintegrating. There are also a few strange pipes sticking out and a rusty old dumptruck way under there. Both of my kids have wanted that nasty thing, I have no clue why. I'm not real into crawling under there myself to get it and trash it, so it's stayed under there. And don't get me started on the Virginia Creeper. THE CREEPER.... (sorry, you must have watched Scooby Doo as a child to really get that one)

I'm thinking I'm going to have to replace the lattice here. And maybe just mulch. If I can find a vine that can be well contained (ie, doesn't try to take over my whole porch) maybe I'll put some of that in, or maybe just some sturdy ground cover. But I don't know. It gets very little sun. What do you think?

** Sorry about those pictures! I didn't get around to taking them until twilight.