Wideshots May 2015

Garden Mysteries and Curiosities

Ladybird Wildflower Plant Sale. This is how they getcha! Got in there at 9am to the members only sale, now I’m going to have to renew my membership.

Apparently I should always go to nurseries before work. I checked my list, filled up with what I could put in my basket (an outdoor beverage bucket – not recommended) and got out of there. Back home by 9:30am.

So what’s in there Tim? Glad you asked. In the front we’ve got some Sensitive Briar (Mimosa roemeriana). Then a lot of winecups (Callirhoe involucrata) to trail between my cactus (this was in the original garden plan 5 years ago). A Lindheimer’s Beeblossom (guara lindheimeri). 3 Eryngo (eryngium leavenworthii). 2 Indiangrass (Sorghastrum nutans), and a Candy Barrel Cacctus (Ferocactus wislizeni).

I’ve been taking Junie on walks through Mabel Davis, and it’s fun watching the seasons change. This is one of my favorite plants – Agarita. I’ve seen the red berries, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it blooming. The yellow flowers are really pretty. I’ve been trying to find a place to put this in the yard, because it tends to be a very scraggly grower. It looks best leaning on other more structural plants.
I rounded the corner and noticed this agarita growing on prickly pear, which seems like something it might be nice to try to replicate in my yard.

Up On The Roof

Everything seems like it’s in bloom. Even the California Poppies have started. But who wants to look at flowers? Let’s save ‘em. Lately I haven’t had a lot of time, but we’ve had a tiny vermin problem in our house. In an attempt to fix things I finally arrived at trimming back the trees that touched the roof.

And while I was up there, why not take some pictures? Different perspective and all that…

Wide Shot – February 2015

Thanks again to Heather at Xericstyle for starting the monthly Wide Shot series. Having these monthly pictures really helps me see how much everything changes.

The thing that strikes me this month is the way that the slower growing structural plants are really starting to give the yard visual interest in the winter. It’s not all just dead twigs. Pam (Digging) told me that I had the structure in place, but at the time I didn’t really quite catch what she was saying. I’m starting to see that structure fall into place.

And now for another warning about what you’re getting into when you start xeric gardening. 

The biggest part of xeric gardening is definitely the weeding. This can get easier once you get things under control, but I don’t think I know a gardener who doesn’t do a lot of it. But #2 is cutting back perenials at the end of winter. It’s a pretty big job. 

Here’s 5 trash cans full of lantana and mistflower that I pulled out today. We tend not to mention this task because it comes at the most beautiful time of year, when it generally is pretty nice to be out in the garden.

But it’s still a big job, and not much fun. The results (and the promise of spring) make the lantana skin irritation feel mostly worthwhile:

New Beds

Too long without posting. Why? I don’t know. You know how you queue up a blog post and it’s going to take too long to write, so you write nothing? I hate that. This is an old story. Today? Today I went out and chopped down an 8 foot tall boxwood bush. But that’s a story for another day.

For the past several winters our washing machine has backed up and flooded our laundry room anytime the temperature went below freezing. It was AWESOME. Nothing like mopping out your garage in freezing weather! We got a $4k estimate on getting the pipe fixed and so we saved and saved. Some people save for vacations. We save for plumbing. In November we had filled our piggy bank, and took the plunge.

The plumbers came out and dug a 4 foot tunnel under our house. Pictures don’t do it justice, but here’s one anyway.

Of course a 4 foot tunnel under your house ends up creating a huge pile of dirt. And anyone who does gardening knows that the amount of dirt you dig out of a hole is roughly 4 times as much as you need to fill the hole back up again.

So I ended up with a nice pile of dirt covering a patch of lawn that already had trouble growing grass. On the Monday before Thanksgiving Julie said I had to do something about the dogs tracking in mud. So I ordered 3 yards of crushed limestone and filled in beds over the next few days.

Day 1

Just filling in existing beds.

Day 2

Etta helped me make the new flowerbed. We scrounged bricks and built a small retaining wall and border.

Then we leveled the bed. But Rhett, what are you doing?!? Keeping you out of the mud was why we started this project in the first place!

After many, many wheelbarrow loads of stone we ended up with this. Note the addition of plants, that we still haven’t planted. When I’m weak I let the girls buy things I have nowhere to plant. Then this happens.

We all love the finished product. Even the dogs.

It all turned out so well Julie wants me to fill in all the rest of the beds that border the house.