Solar lights for the lawn, patio, or garden are a decorative way to enhance the landscape around your home. In the past, when you wanted lighting around your yard you had to hire an electrical contractor to come out and run all of the electrical wiring under the ground. Solar lighting requires no wiring and therefore no electricity usage. This is an easy do-it-yourself project.

Some advantages to installing solar lighting:

• The LED lamps last about 10,000 hours

• They come with rechargeable NiCad batteries

• They illuminate for about 8 hours after getting good light

• The photocell which is a built-in solar panel charges the battery from sunlight

• A built-in light sensor detects when to turn the light on in the evening and off at daylight

Solar lights come in many varieties and have many uses around the home.

Some of the most common varieties are:

• Solar lights in sets that come mounted on stakes-great for pathway lighting
• Solar lights that hang-great for hanging around a porch or patio. They can also be hung from shepherd's rod hooks anywhere.
• Floating solar lights-great for floating in a swimming pool, fish pond, or small tank (might be more of a Texas thing, *wink*)
• Solar spotlights-great for creating directional lighting to highlight certain features such as garden statues, flowers, Christmas or seasonal decorations
• Solar lit house numbers-blocks that have a solar lit panel that backlights your house numbers for your house address

Some of the most common uses are:

• As a border around flowerbeds
• Outlining sidewalks or pathways
• Bordering a driveway

• To decorate a patio table or around a seating area

• Around the perimeter of a deck or patio
• Floating solar lights can be used in swimming pools, spas, ponds and water features such as waterfalls
• Spotlight solar lights can be used to draw attention to a particular feature in your yard or on your house such as a garden statue, an outdoor mural, Christmas or seasonal decorations, etc.

Solar lawn lights make great gifts for that person who has everything. I gave a set of solar lawn lights to my parents a couple of years ago for Christmas. They weren't even aware that there was such a thing. They were tickled to have them and had a hard time picking where to put them because once they had them they thought of so many places they thought they would work well at. My mother refused to put them in her front yard because she thought someone would find them as interesting as she did and steal them. She ended up placing them on each side of her swing in the backyard.

In the cemetery where my son is buried, it seems to be a big tradition to have candles burning on the gravesites. Replacing the candles gets expensive and even though they are in a holder, it just doesn't seem like the best idea in dry Texas summers.

We purchased a solar light and placed it on his grave. Others around us have done the same. They are maintenance free. You place it out there, it absorbs the sun in the daytime and then shines all night.

They make solar spotlights as well, if you wanted to place it at the side or foot of the grave and aim it at the engraving on the stone.