Here we have some Texas Beargrass all tied up like a shoelace to keep it out of the way. I find this endlessly amusing. The non-gardeners I hang out with don’t have a clue what I’m on about.
Lantana is already sprouting. I hope we don’t get another hard freeze and I regret having this uncovered…
And a shot of the path to the back. I really like the bump out to preserve the big muhly. I’m currently growing a ton more of this from seed. There’s going to be so much of it. Great for preventing erosion. Low maintenance. Chokes out weeds. Looks magnificent in the sun. What’s not to like?
After many days of the boring stuff (moving granite, laying pavers, waiting for it to stop raining already), our front yard has moved into the cleaning and “moving plants around phase”. It’s really exciting to watch the yard come together.
Ah. What a beautiful day for gardening. The optimism of winter when we clear and plan on how we will control nature this year. Only to have that hubris come crashing down with the proliferation of winter weeds. Anyway the area is almost cleared. Some seeds are in. Another batch coming soon. Wildflower meadow hopefully beginning this spring.
So at some point this year I pretty much gave up on the yard. It has been too much. I started working full time at an office (I was working from home 3 days a week). And I just couldn’t keep up. I wanted to live in a garden home before we moved to this 0.4 acre yard.
Julie talked me down and we decided to go with a design firm. They created a really nice rejigger of the front yard. And some designs for the backyard we decided we don’t want to afford. But it did get us to distill what we really wanted, and come up with a list of tasks to finish.
So we have started a flurry of activity focused on getting the yard to be more maintenance free and hopefully get a nice outdoor area setup under our tree in time for new years.
First up was getting rid of one of our backyard paths. This thing was horrible. It was a combo of stepping stones and open spaces full of weeds that was pretty much unmaintainable. We needed to be able to maintain a drain so we made the path go from our shed to that drain. That’s it.
I feel like the fallen leaves make it look like it has been there forever. So the area where the path was will become a wildflower meadow. We don’t use it. We rarely look at it. Yet I spend a ton of time fretting over it and maintaining it.
Oh and that pile of wood on the left? That’s our old stage that I finally got around to removing. Another check off the list. And I got it done before someone fell through it and injured themselves. Based upon the rot of the boards I think it was only a matter of days before someone did fall through.
And to replace the stage. Well we’re working on that. But there’s a delivery in our driveway. Stay tuned…
Halloween plants! Spoooooky…..
My mom is going to help me out with my lower garden. She’s planning a more traditional romantic garden. This is the beginning of our plan.
Cutting flowers before the deluge. I should do this more often.
Fall color in January. Weird year.
It’s not true we don’t have fall color in Texas. We just don’t plant enough of it focusing a little too much on our oaks. This is the lovely flame leaf sumac in greens, and reds, and oranges.
