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I finally pruned my rose-bushes today. Mainly because one completely fell over. I’m worried I’ve damaged it, but chances are it was just figuring it could claim more garden space if it fell over. Those rose bushes are scary.

The one above is the less scary one. It’s a tad excessive on the thorns and I couldn’t help thinking about Conan O’Brian. 

Picture #2 is me in my work glasses. Jenny over at Rock Rose admonished all of us in blogger world to wear protective glasses. Apparently the glare can be cause eye problems. These are 3M work glasses that filter light, but don’t do much tinting. I can’t really garden with a lot of tint.

Picture #3 is attempt #2 at getting some veggies and plants for the front yard. This one looks like it’s going to go. We’ve got broccoli  peas, and okra going gangbusters. I’ve got a lot of Dichondra ‘silver falls’ started in there. I want to cover my front yard with it. Also some santa barbara daisy and gayfeather. We’ll see how this turns out. I’m not horribly optimistic, but if it works it’ll save me a lot of money. I don’t really have enough money to buy the amount of ground cover I need.

Julie left town to help my sister and her new baby while my brother-in-law is in Norway. So Stella and I went to harbor freight and picked up this greenhouse for $29.99. We’ve got melons, carrots, brocolli, peas, okra, grass, cone flowers, and swiss chard. This is a first for me, but Stella grows veggies at school all the time and so she took charge of the process.

I love this. Julie was cleaning out some indoor plants that hadn’t done so well so I brought in a piece of ice plant just to see how it would do. It started blooming inside which was a nice surprise. But the blooms were yellow. Outside they’re orange.
I’m sure this is just an effect of chlorophyll  but still it’s fascinating.  

Hope.

I feel like since planting this last spring all I’ve done is weed. And weed. And weed. That picture is of feathergrass coming in. Hopefully this is the beginning of the decomposed granite being more a xeric flowerbed, and less a cracked sidewalk with weeds growing through.

I’m hopeful. I suppose that’s why I’m a gardener. 

I’m pretty sure my photography would improve if I took my pictures at the beginning or the end of the day.

The first picture is what I discovered while mowing. In real life it’s a riot of pinks and reds. A little more subdued in the photo.

And a picture of my nicely mowed lawn. There is something soothing about a nice lawn…

Ah large brush day. Normally the time of year when I try to make headway in the pile of brush I have in the backyard. Get about ¾ done and am useless for the rest of the day. 

Prior to this year I was using pruners and a tree saw to break down pieces. This year I purchased a cordless Ryobi pruner. 

Yeah, I suppose it is basically just a cordless reciprocating saw, but it’s slightly smaller and that makes it much easier to work with. I did have to take it apart this morning because it had stopped working about 1 week into owning it. The factory worker had decided not to screw in all the screws very well. After tightening everything up I was able to break down all of my branches in two sessions. It took less than an hour and a half.

The size is such that I am unlikely to attempt to cut down something bigger than I can handle.

After clearing out the brush I found I had a Spanish dagger and a twisted leaf yucca growing in my compose heap. Where to replant them…