Not much has changed in the garden since we dug the trenches last month except for some rototilling. We bought ourselves a small rototiller to tear up our weeds and grass and it's worked quite well for the little we've used it.
One note, I've seen more than a few times people advising against rototilling oxalis... I think I disagree. We went over a couple square yards of wonderful clovers without going deep into the soil, no more than an inch (very easy to do with a small rototiller). So we ripped up the green vegetation in a very short matter of time and the bulbs are still undisturbed underneath. Seems to me that the result is the same as handpicking but with sooo much time saved. It's also so much more thorough. Now, we'll just wait for the clovers to reappear and go over them again to weaken the bulbs. Hopefully in a few years the bulbs will about give up.
Anyway, for some whimsy, I bought a bird feeder!
I don't know why but growing up we never had a bird feeder at any of the places I lived. It's made me so giddy watching the birds fly around. I caught a squirrel hanging down from a branch and spinning the feeder to knock down the food. Mischievous, but so fun to watch. As soon as I have some free money, I'm getting an Adirondack chair to read and watch from.
So, I have few wonderful photos of my back yard moving into spring. First, the most dramatic blossoms, our star magnolia.
At first the magnolia flowers were looking pretty bad because of the occasional frosty weather, but now the blooms are better and with the leaves half emerged, I think it looks better than it ever will.
Next, the tiny clusters of flowers on my new Manzanita (not sure what variety sadly). Not in the ground yet but blooming like it doesn't care.
I'm so happy with the Manzanita and the Ceanothus, just now bursting its buds, that I'm sure I'll buy at least one more of each.
Next, no flowers yet, but I'm loving the leaves on the irises I moved to the back last fall. They're finally growing large enough that the blades are growing wavy and really quite beautiful.
I've also started a majority of the seeds I ordered and collected last year. Before now, I'd never collected and planted seeds before; before last year, I had never started plants from seeds. But I bagged up a few seedheads from my plant pots last summer and a couple from plants I'd put in my parents backyard. I've also recently harvested over a hundred little black seeds from the penstemen gloxinoides I planted in the front this winter.
This time around, I decided to go the slow and steady way and have had my seed plants growing outside from the beginning, avoiding the problem of my curious inside cats. My seedlings may be slightly small, but they are very strong. They even survived that surprise hail last week! No casualties.
Columbines collected from a double pink and a double purple variety I bought for my parents (they actually reseeded at my parents house despite the poor soil). I have four or five pots of these.
Dianthus 'Ideal Violet' from Parkseed.com
Galliardia 'Mesa Yellow' and 'Arizona Sun'. Galliardia was what I meant to buy when I got Gazania last year, but oh well, I have dozens of them now.
Here are some of the poppies. The long thin blades are regular California poppies from a seed packet, but the thicker leaved ones are Red horned poppies from the first seeds I ever harvested (hehe my babies). Click on the picture, the hairy leaves are so weird.
Lastly, I haven't written about work on the house in some time because there hasn't been much that was picture worthy. Perhaps in another month, I'll be able to post pictures of our living room, painted and decorated for the first time. As of now, the paint has been scraped off the plaster and maybe a tenth of the wall space has gotten a skim coat of new plaster.
More later.
