Our house came with two flower beds right up against the house. This one happens to be right by the dog door, and the dogs had torn it up. I finally got around to cleaning it up on Monday.
This bed is under our roof overhang so it gets next to no moisture. And I really can’t get excited about the amount I’d have to water it to keep flowers alive in it.
So I put in a new cactus. There’s an existing flame acanthus that seems to enjoy the abuse. I pulled some rocks from other parts of the yard and put down some pavers to hopefully keep the dogs out of the bed proper.
I’m really happy with how it turned out without spending any money.
I replaced my attic stairs this weekend. Which was a completely un-fun non-gardening task. But while at the Home Depot I passed by these knee pads and had to pick them up.
The biggest problem with my old knee-pad was that I would reach rather than move. Because it was a pain to move. Which leading to back pain.
Now I’ve got to retrain myself that moving is easy. And stop reaching.
The blue jays keep building nests in the tree right next to our patio.
This is even after the year I heard horrible bird screams and rushed outside to find my little chihuahua-daschund Lucy tossing a baby blue jay in the air. The baby survived thanks to Austin Wildlife Rescue.
That said, we LOVE having blue jays building nests in the tree right next to our patio. Such fun to watch.
The rose bushes. I really like rose bushes. I think it’s funny that people baby them. You can definitely do that, and your flowers won’t look as beat up as mine do. But these bushes are planted in a hellscape where they get blasted with afternoon sun and get dumped on when it rains (I really should put in a gutter to rain barrel right there). But roses love it. Great hardy plants most of them.
I almost squeeled with excitement while I was weeding. Bulbine is one of my favorite plants, and it was growing in the middle of some grass sprouts so I assumed it was just grass. I tend not to buy it anymore since it’s a Mexican native and not that cold hardy, but I assume if it’s starting to spread by itself, it’s established enough that it might start living through the winters.
The second picture is a nandina that I cut back to the ground last year. That’s less than 6 months of growth pictured. That stuff freaks me out. I really need to get rid of it before it manages to take over the world.
I used to go to garden centers and pick one of this and one of that. I love plants. I love how different and cool they are. But my garden always looked kind of scraggly. And you couldn’t really see the plants. Nothing stood out.
A while back I read that you should plant in 3s. So now that’s what I do. I buy 3 of each plant (unless it’s something that will be a strong focal point and able to stand on its own. Think tree. Or prickly pear).
I then plant these in triangles, and try to overlap the triangles so I don’t end up with plants in straight lines. I generally tend to think more of tri-corner boomerang shapes when I’m mixing plants together. This is easier in practice than to demonstrate in a picture, since plants are different sizes and it’s easy to keep them from lining up.
If you haven’t tried this, I’d highly recommend it. It makes a HUGE difference.