Getting close!

We've been busy planting and raking and shoveling this week -- I have to work in the afternoons, so we've been working mornings and evenings getting our planting done.  The first thing we started was the long planter box - removing all the fortnight lily (dietes bicolor). 

There was tons of it - it grows like crazy out here.  Ours was a pale yellow with a little bit of deep purple.  We dug it up and split it into fairly large clumps, and put an ad on craigslist for people to come by.

People came by and picked it up.  and that took care of that!  We also dug out and replanted a large purple fountain grass (pennisetum setaceum 'rubrum') - we incorporated a number of existing plants into our landscape plan.  We just had to measure out where to place it.  We also planted a king palm (Archontophoenix cunninghamiana) and a large bird of paradise (Strelitzia nicolai)-- and after cleaning up the soil in the planter box, we planted two lions tail (Leonotis leonorus) and an Austrailian tree fern (Cyathea cooperi).  It's looking much better....

But we still have a large pygmy date palm to relocate.  It was planted right on top of the main water shut off and the original irritation pipes. 

We've got it all tied up and we've been water-jetting the roots to see what's going on there.  Today we will cut back the roots around the pipes and get this guy out and replanted.

 Then we just have some of the last plants left around the front to get into the ground.  I am also going to paint the brick planter - the red just doesn't do it for me.  I'm going to go a few shades darker than the house paint and maybe it will look a little more modern.

We have had a lot of luck picking up plants and things on Craigslist -- we answered an ad for some landscaping boulders - these are rather expensive around here, about $50 for one good sized boulder at the landscaping shops - so we've been trying to keep an eye out on CL.  We saw an ad, and the folks said, "come on over!" so we went and got a truckload full of nice round rocks. They were a super nice young couple working on their yard, and as we were loading up the rocks, they were talking about renting a rototiller -- we said we still had my brother's and if they wanted to borrow it for the weekend in exchange for the rocks, they could save the rental fee. They were excited, and so we made a nice swap.  I love a win/win!  When they finished with the rototiller, they had another small pile of rocks for us, too.  This is just a small sample:

One of the nice things about working on the yard, and its slow evolution from dead grass to nicely landscaped yard is meeting our neighbors, all of whom come by with encouragement and kind words about our progress.  Nearly everyone says something nice about the front walkway in particular - how well it goes with the house.  So that's nice to hear!  This evening, our neighbors to the north were out working on their irrigation system, so it was nice to chat with them and work side-by-side.

Coming soon: the big reveal of our finished yard!