Painting and Weeding

Forced to stop due to the rain, this seems as good a time as any to give an update. Last weekend was busy with Patrick pushing me much harder than I prefer to work. But as long as he's working, I feel bad to relax. Right now it's a bit different though, while he finishes the final touches in the closet, I'm resting my back. I guess I pushed myself too hard and have had a horrible back ache since Wednesday.

So yes, we're finishing the closet now because last weekend we got a bit distracted and painted the kitchen.


Now we finally have a finished room. We even put up our first picture frames. The light yellow makes the room feel so wonderfully warm and cheerful. Patrick has had breakfast in there a few times now, despite the wobbly table and ugly cabinets. Now it's about the nicest looking room we have. We also spent a large chunk of our time, most of Sunday, creating a frame on the wall above the washer and dryer so that we could put up shelves. We attached the frame to three vertical studs and then were able to attach the shelves nicely in the middle of the nook. I helped draw up the design and find the correct dimensions for everything, but mostly this project was Patrick's. He's clearly very proud of the job he did.



Those three pictures took all our time last weekend and shockingly, even though we were so close to finishing the closet we didn't work on it at all. We just can't focus. The closet is finished now though. We sanded down the new plaster and painted yesterday and Patrick has been in the bedroom most of the afternoon assembling the closet organizer.


The rest of this weekend, I got out into the garden and finally put in some good time pulling up Oxalis.


Actually, this one isn't a before picture, these pretty flowers are still taunting me in the corner but here is the nice stretch of ground that I worked on.


I cleared out everything around a bunch of irises that we apparently mowed over last year, not being able to see them under all the weeds. They're badly in need of dividing which I'm sure I'll get to eventually...

But the irises that I divided last fall and moved to the back of the garden look wonderful and now that the lavender next to them is in bloom, I really love the contrast.



Everything is finally starting to come up, even the bulbs that I planted far too late in the season. And I can't really be bothered to think of transitional phrases etc. so here you are.


Our Dark Star Ceanthonus, still only partially blooming.



Grape Hyacinth growing around some of my roman chamomile. The chamomile helped while I was picking out the tiny clovers in and around the grape hyacinths, the smell was absolutely wonderful. I'll be putting many more of them around the garden.


The daffodils in this group will be opening any day. Two have already opened in a slightly more sunny spot.


There are two left over tulips in front of the group. Then, the same tulips, just plain red ones, in the front have opened on each side of the front stairs.


Not quite up yet but looking promising are the Hostas I had in pots last year.


Other things coming up aren't so welcome. I have slightly fewer onions spread throughout the yard than Oxalis and their pretty white flowers are starting to emerge.



I quite like the flowers but the leaves are pretty ugly, besides the fact that these are weedy. The blackberries are also coming back.


And I guess that's about all.

A Month Later

My last post pretty much corresponded with the beginning of my new job. Things have been far too busy for me to even imagine what I could write about but luckily, not so busy that I haven't been able to detach from my job over the weekends and spend time enjoying the garden and working on the house.

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.

Finally Emerging

I've been horribly negligent about the bulbs that I so badly needed to buy over the last few months. Not on the buying side, I bought lots of bulbs but never got to planting them. Not until past all the recommended planting dates. On either January 8th or 9th, can't remember, I planted the Muscari I bought back in November. While I've already seen pictures of other people's gardens with emerging Muscari flower buds, mine are just getting started. But I'm very very glad to say that I didn't plant them too late! It's been just under two weeks but the tops of the leaves are starting to emerge.



I was trying to count up the emerging tips but kept getting lost and seeing more where I'd already counted. There are at least 30 already coming up.

And on to the bulbs in the front yard, I discovered three days ago that my tulips are also starting to pop up. Does anyone have tulips coming up already? I thought I waited too long to plant these too but it was still in early December. Much better than my other bulbs. These are on either side of the steps to our front porch.



You can probably tell that I didn't amend the soil as much (as well) with the tulips as I did with the Muscari. I think I'll work some more compost into the soil when the bulbs die back next year.

Like the bulbs, everything else in our garden just now is in the development stage. There seem to be just two plants blooming just now, the breath of heaven shrub in the front and the ground cover Gazania next to the street tree.



I'll just have to do my best to add more plants that will give winter interest before the next one comes around (shouldn't be difficult as I have so much to add). I've already taken one step in that direction by finally planting one of the barberry 'red glow' shrubs that I bought, again, ages ago. It looks small and pitiful with only a few leaves remaining but those leaves are gorgeous.


Then there's the Dietes or fortnight lily that I planted a few weeks ago which is finally starting recover some of its darker green coloring. It had been going slightly yellow in its pot but this year will be a better one for it. (This is my baby of two and a half years now, I'm determined it will be happy this year and bloom abundantly).


Last, on the topic of my developing plants, the newly planted Ceanothus 'Dark Star' that I mentioned before has little buds meaning I can be sure that it's happily developing in its new home.


Last of all, I just have to post a few pictures of the new exterior of the house. The better lighting in these pictures is just begging for me to post them.



And I told you, see? The back porch, though still with ugly siding attached to it, is straight and level.

Far too Much Water

So this weekend, I was finally set to stop procrastinating and fill our green bin with blackberry brambles. And I did, as much as could fit at least, which happened to be a bit less than half. In the process of pulling and separating the amazingly long canes (some twisting nearly a dozen feet), I found some oddly high tangles of grass, right in the middle of the brambles, surrounding flat depressions of grass... kind of like a bed... It was empty when I found it but this must have been a nest for something big - maybe raccoons or opossums?



Recently, we've found some rinded lemons sitting around the yard, like rodents have eaten the sweet skin and left the sour flesh - my coworker rents a place with garden full of rats that do a similar thing.... but luckily she said that they always leave a mess of lemon peel bits around the part they leave behind and my thieves are very clean, taking every piece with them so I'm crossing my fingers that it's just squirrels or raccoons. Anyway, I don't think they've been living in our blackberry stand for a while now or at least hopefully they won't be coming back now that I've open their nest up to the cold.

So while I packed our bin with the thorny thorny canes, trying to not get pricked, I glanced over to our back planting bed and noticed (for the second or third time) that standing water had collected in the left side of the triangle. I wasn't happy the other times I'd noticed this but didn't have the time to deal with it, this time I decided that now that the bin was full, I should try to fix that problem, too. Here's the first picture I took, sadly after I'd taken a couple spadefuls out but the problem is still obvious:


A few minutes shoveling didn't take care of the problem so I kept going, discovering more and more water just barely under the boggy ground I was standing on. At the least, you can see below that the standing water has moved away from the roses, pelargoniums, and lavender that were probably drowning a bit.


Now the other side didn't look bogged down but if I was making a drainage ditch for the one side I wanted it to do it's work on the other side as well. Also, I noticed that much more water came out and gathered in the areas I had dug already than one would think possible so I figured something would appear even in the dry looking side. And it did, but there's no good pictures to show off the digging I did for the rest of the night, well past sunset (I haven't been that enthusiastic digging ever, I think). And eager to get started on Sunday, I came out to take a picture of any continued flooding the next morning.





And yes, I did all this awesome trenching with my own girlishly weak arms. And all the horrible mucky, muddy mess, that's mine too. It was also all over me the night before and destroying the only pair of shoes I really wear, some little black flats, that I'm now wearing, even though they're still a bit caked. Feeling that after the night before, flats with no tread and very little waterproofing power weren't the best footwear to continue in, I went with Patrick and we both got some wellies (or galoshes if you prefer) to work in.

This time, I dragged in Patrick to lend his more powerful, less sore muscles to the trenching. Together we were able to get the trench continued all the way to the end of the grass in the lower part of the back garden. Very proud of our weekend work, although it is true that I'd hoped that I'd finally get the rest of my bulbs buried and my maybe some of my new plants - Christmas Eve nursery trip, my present! - in the ground.

Still, this means we're finally started and even halfway done on one of our many projects. Now that the trench is dug out, we just have to get gravel and rocks delivered so we can make our dry creek bed. In my original plans I didn't have the creek going up into the top garden but I think it will be better this way. Now our large decomposed granite flat space up top will be bisected by a cute little creek and we can place flat flagstones for steps across it. Also, any worry about bogginess in patio area up top will be taken care of.

But anyway, one to two inches of rain is forecasted for tonight so I'll take more pictures tomorrow that include the second part of the trench and we'll see if it survives the night and serves its purpose.

Weekend Gardening

I was so so happy that the weekend arrived and it was actually dry like they said it would be. I've had a great desire to be out working in the garden lately but by the time I get home on a weekday, the light is already going. I'm barely able to look around and see if work has been done on the house while I've been gone. But this weekend I was able to get out and do some work. Muddy work, but overall very satisfying.

For the past month or so I've been telling myself every time I go out to the garden that I'm going to get my pruners and chop down the big strand of blackberry bushes in the back corner of the yard but easily distracted as I am, I haven't so much as touched one of the canes despite going out 5 or 6 times since my resolution. This time I distracted myself with the mound of grass, weeds, and clay that I had heaped up in mid-summer to dig our solitary flower bed in the back of the garden.

Our flower bed has since expanded in both directions but the heap has remained. I thought it might naturally form a small hill once the rains started to come. Instead, it stubbornly remained a lumpy heap, which I have to admit I was actually quite sure would happen. You can kind of see it, lazing there in the picture below from mid-October.


Since the rains started, it has also started to sprout a new growth of weedy geraniums and grasses (luckily no oxalis, the bulbs must be buried deep). And since there was also a couple inches of original grass between it and the finished bed that have been trying to spread into our precious, clean flower bed, I decided to procrastinate on the berries, by hacking at the heap this weekend. Also, it's the low impact, easy on the muscles kind of gardening I especially like. So here it is, after picking it apart for two hours or so, it was finally a nicely manicured little hill behind the flower bed.


The lump was kind of resting against the bottom few inches of the fence for these 5 months so you can see the dark soaked wood behind it... I know, very bad of me, very unneighborly... but looking at it again on Sunday, dried out, it looks like that area of the fence is in no worse condition than the rest of it.

Also, sidenote - I cut out the two overgrown Coreopsis plants I had between the Agastache and Foxglove. I also cut down the Agastache and harvested the seeds a week ago. I don't know if the Coreopsis will come back, it might, the roots look very healthy, but if they do I'll move them to a new place. The Agastache and Foxgloves next year should be enough for that part of the bed.

And so, Sunday! Having conquered the heap, I decided I must now use it like I originally planned to. Now, the lighting is pretty bad but here:


That's a very well shaped, at least I thought so, Ceanothus 'Dark Star' sitting on top of the heap. I've always wanted to plant one in the back garden, so this is what I was thinking when I originally made the heap. I've read that a little additional water in the summer can be good for it but that too much can kill it and that it needs to be in well drained soil, so I think it will do well there. Also once it expands into a small tree, it will go very well with the two roses in front and next to it. While the roses are cut down and resting for the winter, the Ceanothus should be in full bloom, winter to spring. Then as it turns into a normal evergreen shrub after the bloom, the roses will take over.

And so the back flower bed is starting to take proper shape. I want most of the plants in the top of the yard to need little water: Agastache, Lavender, and Ceanothus. This next year, I plan to add native wildflowers and shrubs, a pergola and wisteria, a redbud, a Black Oak, and a large dry space in the middle with Decomposed granite or something similar.

There are already two trees in the back of the garden: a deciduous magnolia and an ornamental lemon. While I was lazing about in between weeding this weekend, I stared off into space in the tree's general area and noticed that a few of the blossoms are starting to open!


There are three or four buds nearly ready to open. In fact, I checked again briefly last night and this bud had open about 2 1/2 inches at the top. I'm glad to see that the drought stress inflicted on it during probably the last 5 years hasn't injured it too much. Last year, I saw beautiful blossoms in March, when I first saw the house, but forgot to take pictures so I still don't know what type of magnolia this is. Once I get some fully opened blossoms I'll probably be able to finally identify it. At first, we weren't sure if we'd want to keep the magnolia, as it isn't in the best of shape but I think if it survives our restorative pruning, we'll keep it. What do I mean? Well here are the biggest problems with the tree:


One of these took care of itself (kinda?). The lower rotted limb just fell off when I touched it one time. It did leave a rotted hole in the trunk like the one in the middle of the picture though. Obviously there used to be a branch there, where it went nobody knows. Then, there's the crossing branch in between the two main trunks. We finally bought a reciprocating saw this weekend, via Craigslist ($50! At home depot, the exact same one for $149.99) so we took care of that and a couple of crossing branches above. What to do about the rotting holes, no clue...

But on the subject of trees and pruning, we did something else this weekend that is probably... not so good... So our Lemon tree! Wonderful lemons, even last week we picked two for cooking, but the body of the tree is about beyond repair. Originally it looked like this from one angle:


After some basic pruning, there was this:


And as we didn't have a reciprocating saw yet, we left some stumps on the tree to clean up later. This Sunday, we started at it. Sawing off those bits first and the ends of some rather less stable look limbs and branches that shot off into the canopy 6 feet... and we kinda... didn't stop.... By the end of the day we had this:


Now, we didn't just go crazy with saw rage. Patrick and I were talking it through, trying to find what was best for the tree... But all we could conclude is that no matter what cuts we make, if we thin out the canopy and cut the ends of branches to promote stronger growth, there would still be a very unstable base structure. For example, the front right branch we cut off extended another 4 feet out from the trunk at a very low angle and then had a very heavy canopy depending on it. If we cut back just the top growth of that limb, it would grow back and become thicker and heavier than before, eventually causing the limb to snap at the trunk. So we cut it to short enough a length that the limb, at that angle, should still be able to support new growth year after year. We had to do the same for two other limbs... obviously...

The final step will be to commit the biggest pruning sin ever... topping the tree... We're planning on cutting it just below the horrible knot you can see if you look closely at the second picture I posted. As this is a citrus tree, something that is very often pruned hard, and it's already in very bad condition, I think this is the only way to help it. I can't be sure what the previous owners did to this tree over the years, but I think it was topped before right where that knot has formed. I think as long as I carefully thin the new growth, selecting the branches growing in the best directions, I think it will become better than before. It has to, heh.

So, it will be topped.