Dirt and Mildew and Paint Chips, Oh My!

I've been wanting to make better (and cuter) use of our courtyard, but have been putting it off for the following reasons:
(1) I haven't had time to paint the house back there, so it is still light grey
(2) The cement wall is dirty, mildewey, and a lot of the paint is loose

Yesterday, I decided to tackle a small piece of this mess and ended up with a pretty good result. I did not scrape and paint the house or the wall. I did scrub off the dirt and mildew with rain barrel water and a washing soda/borax mixture.

In anticipation of doing this cleaning project, I purchased seven large vintage glass vases (thank you Goodwill) that I planned to place on a small protruding ledge for use as giant candle holders (thank you mom for having a million old candles).

The vases looked like this:

The wall transformation looked like this:

Pre scrubbing

post scrubbing

With vases!

As if I didn't have enough going on, I also decided to make pickles! The front jar is full of cucumbers, jalapenos, chili powder and crushed red peppers.....yum!