Roses get a new home

A couple of years ago, we bought a climbing rose, with the intention of building an awesome trellis over the garage door.  Well, we never got around to that.  And our rose got neglected a little, and died back somewhat, but revived itself over the winter and set out new shoots. But it wasn't until a year later that we realized the new shoots were actually from the root stock, and not from the grafted canes - so they bloomed with kind of average looking red blooms rather than the gorgeous pale pink ones that we had before.  Nevertheless, we strung some wire (far cry from that cute trellis we planned on!)  And the sad little red rose dutifully climbed up.



You can see it hanging out in the background here, in a pot with it's skinny little canes growing upwards.





One of the problems, though, was that we really intended to build it a nicer box - jackhammering away the useless sidewalk and building some kind of box/bed for it.  Well -- that part we finally did this week!




First, Dale had to use the impact drill to drill a series of holes so we could punch through the sidewalk.  Of course, we decided to do it on the hottest day we've had this spring.  But that didn't take too long, then we had to whale away on it with a sledge hammer. I tried doing that part, but unfortunately, I can only use the smaller sledge hammer, so he had to smash it a couple of times with the larger one and it broke up nicely.  Then I used the crowbar to pry all the concrete chunks out, and then dug a little tunnel under to the dirt in front so I could run the irrigation up into the box.




Then I laid out a pattern of bricks to see how many we'd need.

We finally got the last of the bricks pulled up from the hell strip, and although I tried giving them away on CL Free,  I had a bunch of no-shows and one person who came and only took half.  So I had plenty.

So we brought them to the back and tried out a nice sized rectangle.  Then we had to wait for evening because by now it was really hot!





So around 6:30ish, we went out, mixed up a batch of cement (we were out of mortar, but since this is not going to be a perfect bricklaying effort, we just went with it).






I didn't take any in-progress pictures, because the cement dried pretty darn fast.  We were just lucky to get it all somewhat nicely done.  We certainly aren't going to get any jobs laying brick.

But it's tidy enough, and ready to go - it only took about an hour or so, and it had all night to set up.  So this morning I got up and gave it a coat of paint. I had painted the bricks in the front of the house, and it looked so much nicer, so I knew I was going to do that here, too - especially since I had no delusions that it was going to look great without the paint!

After we spent so much effort getting this box built and all, we should go ahead and buy a new rose (we'll plant the other one somewhere else in the yard), since I really want white roses.


So this morning, after painting, I ran out to get some nice soil for the planter box and see if I could find an iceberg white climbing rose (I looked through Pinterest to see if I could find some good leads on what I wanted -- and the Iceberg is the one that fits the list).  And I actually found one - -not at the same place I bought the rose we previously had, although that's where I went first -- but I got a really gorgeous, healthy white Iceberg climber at Home Depot.  Hmmm....

So here it all is, planted and tethered loosely to the wires.  I underplanted it with some miniature iceplant that looks nice hanging down and has tiny pink flowers, and a lantana that I might move out later, after we see how well the rose blooms down low.  I read up on how to train the long canes to encourage blooms, so we've got a plan, but climbers often get leggy and do well to have a bushy plant at the base to hide the skinny legs.


This year, this rose will spend most of its time growing long canes up the wires, all we have to do is make sure they criss-cross and stay healthy!



So - another project and this one actually kept up on!  Maybe I'll get back in the blogging habit after all...

A trip to St. Petersburg, FL

I just got back from a quick jaunt to St. Petersburg, Florida for the FAEA (Florida Art Educator's Association) Annual conference, where I was one of their keynote speakers.  I also presented a workshop on creating books with a coptic binding.  I love going to art educator's conferences, art teachers are such fun! 

While I was in the area, I looked online to see what attractions I should check out.  I did visit the Dali Museum, which is where one of the evening events for the conference took place.  This is a new building that houses a large number of Dali works.  Above is the central staircase that is modeled on a DNA strand.

Another thing on the list was the Sunken Gardens, which is a historic 100 year old botanical garden over 6 acres.  The gardens were well tended and full of lush, tropical plants.

The bamboo were clacking together in the slight breeze, a charming sound.

There were so many beautiful plants.  But almost none of them had labels on them, which was a disappointment!

And little lizards were everywhere!

This was an interesting tree - I wish I knew what it was!  It had large fruits hanging, the picture on the right shows what they look like with segments missing.

I loved the dense greenery.  The garden was really well tended and I enjoyed my visit!

 After visting the Sunken Gardens, I went to a local city park so I could see some alligators (I saw a really big female with two of her little babies, and a medium sized one sunning itself), and then went to Tampa to check out some manatees.  So I did manage to squeeze in some interesting trips during my 1/2 day that was unscheduled!

one year later

These are just a few shots of my yard, comparing the pictures I took when we bought the house a year ago, and the change since then.  Lots of these are fairly recent changes, but taken as a whole, it helps me to see the progress we're making.  Step by step....

The first is the front flower box.  The mums that I bought at the dollar store burst into bloom this week - just in time for Halloween.  It's cheery to drive up to at the end of the day!  I took the iris on the far left of the 'before' picture, chopped it down into smaller bits and alternated it with the mums.  There's a climbing black eyed susan vine that I thought was done for a month ago, climbing up the post.  It was looking dry and leggy, I pushed it back down the post and it seemed to appreciate it.

This was the first section I cleared out and planted, and it's the most established.  This area gets sun all day.  Almost all of these are freebie plants I picked up from Craigslist.  A couple were moved from the front flower box (the aloes).  Everything's looking happy here.

The planting strip on the other side of the house, it gets early morning sun and then shade the rest of the day.  The plants here are filling out nicely.  I took out the evergreens (which did not look as nice as they do in this picture, above right), and the grass, and added some gravel and stepping stones since this is where the neighbor gets into their car every day -- no point in planting up to the edge.

This is the last part planted, and it's not even done yet. I have a gaping hole in the bed where I intend on putting in some steping stones.  I also want to remove the rest of the brick walkway and change the steps into something more artful and less -- well, less a straight line across the strip.  You can also see here how bad the ivy was on the tree and how it looks like a normal tree now. This winter, we'll take the remaining grass off the strip and get the rest of the plants moved so we don't have dead grass along this area.

Getting ready to hit the road again this week, off to Florida for a conference.  This is a busy month!  I'll be traveling later to spend Thanksgiving with my daughter in Chico, that will be a fun break. 

Fiddling around in the yard....

This has been a great weekend, weatherwise:

and I hated wasting it sitting inside watching Season One of Homeland in some kind of TV watching binge (but I did it anyway), so I took periodic breaks to go out and do some yard work here and there.  I'd been letting the front parking strip (a.k.a. the Hellstrip) dry out, to be sure all the ivy was gone as well as the St. Augustine grass (it's tenacious), so I worked some manure into the soil and transplanted some of our miscellaneous plants there.  I have high hopes but right now, I just wanted to keep the dust down:

There are a couple of bare spots there - I am going to be putting in some paving when I get the right materials - I've got my eyes open for some broken concrete, just lurking about on Craigslist until someone posts some for free.  All the stuff I planted was free, so I only needed to pick up some mulch to keep it moist while it roots.  Also - everything here should be low-water, low maintenance once it's established. 

As a reminder; here's what it looked liked before:

I also scored some plumeria branches on craigslist for free.  Whenever these are offered, they're snapped up right away, so I was lucky to be the first to respond.  They said "large branches", which in my experience, means a piece around 18" long.  We went and they weren't kidding, very large branches, around 6' long with multiple areas for replanting.  This is the flower that plumeria produces - they're used in lei making in Hawaii:

 So we planted one in the front yard near the corner of the house, one in the backyard where we'll be able to admire it from our future pool, and then we have one in our "holding area" behind the garage, and the remaining 3 pieces of the trunk went there, too.  We'll see if they actually root (supposedly, they root easily and will grow within 90 days).

Here's one of the larger pieces:

Also in the backyard - hummingbird feeders!  We had visited my brother in Los Angeles a few weeks ago (where we got the two attenuatas above that are flanking the plumeria), and he has scores of hummingbirds flitting around his yard.  His wife, Lisa, has hummingbird feeders all around, and we loved the atmosphere of birds zipping around, so we picked up one hummingbird feeder to add to our previous one that no birds went to -- and tried a new location.  Before we knew it, we had two hummingbirds visiting.  So this weekend, we picked up two more feeders and placed them around the yard.

One thing we noticed is that one hummingbird had been chasing others off, so we figured if we put them all over the yard, we'd increase the number of chances for them to be successful in avoiding the bossy one.  There's a picture of a hummingbird I took at the Huntingdon gardens, too.

So that was it, enjoying the late warm weather, catching up on Homeland, and getting the yard a little more habitable. 

Goodbye, Tree

Yesterday I had a tree company come out to look at this huge bottlebrush that leaves a ton of crap on my yard.  We need to remove it for a couple of reasons:  we want to expand the house in the future (adding on a bathroom to the master bedroom) and we want to put in a pool next summer.  While we could have waited on this, the reason I really hated to is because we get tired of this:

 

All those leaves everywhere! and these:

those hurt when you step on them, and there's been plenty of times I've caught myself before I fell when I feel them rolling under my feet!  And there's hundreds of them out there.

The first thing the tree guy said was, "That's not a bottlebrush, it's a tristania."  It looks like a bottlebrush because the bloom are similar, but this has a different type of bark and it's much larger.  Which is what I thought was odd about this, but I'm no tree expert, that's for sure.  So besides the tree in the picture at the top, you can see two smaller, interior oaks behind it.  These are pretty messy trees, too, so they were going to take them all out.  They showed up bright and early this morning and got right down to business:

 

and in no time, they had that tree cut right up.  My cats were fascinated.  When they got to this part, the guy started cutting chunks of the main trunk, and when they hit the ground, you could feel the thunk!

I had to go to work, so I left right around here, hoping that when I got home, it would be neat and tidy, like they promised.  And it was!  And now, it looks so bare out there!

This morning:
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          This afternoon!
                       ------>








 One of the downsides to cutting these trees down is that our yard is going to feel HOT with the late afternoon sun.  But we'll get some stuff planted, and get a pergola eventually to help out.  It'll be nice in the late fall and winter, though, to get all that sunlight streaming in. 

So now, here's the view from in front of the garage:

When we closed on the house
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                                                        This afternoon:
                                                           ------>


Yes, that sad lemon tree will be going eventually, too, but it blocks the sun from coming directly in the living room during the late afternoon. We're hoping that the bamboo we planted will grow in the next couple of years to help do some of that, too. 


Now that the trees are gone, we're probably going to lose what's left of the scrubby grass, but what the heck, more room for plants. 

And now, I can start looking for estimates for a pool, so we can plan how that's going to work in the coming year.    Finally - the cost.  When we lived in Indiana, we had a massive cottonwood that our FHA loan process insisted that we have trimmed.  It cost us $850 to trim that tree.  The guys from OC Tree Care that came today to cut down and remove all the wood/waste for 3 trees, and grind the stumps below the ground, and charged $500, which I thought was really reasonable.  I was pleased with the work they did and the way they left the yard.  I'd use them again if we need any work done on our trees.

 

 

North side yard

On the north side of our house, we had previously cut down an ugly interior oak that was spreading crap all over our yard and the neighbor's driveway.  The stump was still there, but this week we decided to work on getting that out, and remove the cypress that is along the house.  Both of these were problems that contributed to our plumbing problems early on - roots growing into the system.  Besides, there are also problems in the sprinkler system on this side of the house, and it's a struggle keeping any grass growing.  So I want to rework the plantings to remove the ugly cypress and put in some low-water alternative plants, and some mulch or gravel.

Here's how it looked when we closed on the house:

We've taken out the tree at left, and the cypress are NOT look as green as they look here - rather, they are kind of rangy and dead looking, especially near the base.  So - Dale fired up the chain saw and cut them all down.  Now it looks like this:

He's in the middle of diggin up the oak stump, and I've got the 6 hedge stumps going.  It's hard, sweaty work and my hands are so tired!  I've got one left to go but he's got a ways to go on that tree stump still.  We should finish this evening

.

Because we don't really get to see this side of the house often, I'm not going to put a ton of money and work into it, but I would like it to look nice.  The neighbors will likely be walking a bit on it as they get in and out of their car, since it runs alongside their driveway, so a gravel base or path of some kind is a smart idea.

I like the concrete stepping stones here:

I also like the taro plants and the large, tall wall of green, but that's probably not going to happen.

The tall cactus here is kind of fun.

 

I like the decomposed granite with the stepping stones and the tall blue grasses.  

 I also like the concrete pavers with the large black stones in between.  I also like the big pot, but again, that's probably not going to happen!

So - back to work getting the last of the stumps out, then I have to dig the grass up and create a base for my gravel, mounding the dirt against the house.  Since we've been getting so many free plants, I'll probably just get this ready and see what comes up!

The Huntingdon visit

I've been working really hard, and as a reward for finishing up my projects, I told myself I could go visit The Huntingdon Gardens and Art Collections.   So yesterday was my all day visit.  I was really excited to visit the Desert Garden for all the lovely, spiky and unusual plants.

 

I think I am picking up some epiphyllum cuttings this afternoon, so I was excited to see this over the top display.   It gives me ideas of where I might put mine (which will be like one or two little strands!)

 

Like Mr. Huntingdon, I am not a big fan of cactus, but the colors on this one might make me one!

 More spiky cacti.  They look great here, but not in my garden!

I also love this mass planting of aeoniums, agaves and the tree aloes.  Of course, I don't have 120 acres to garden, but I think a little patch of aeoniums are in my future.

I don't remember what these are called, they're from Madagascar and they look very lush with their lovely green leaves, but those spines! yikes! (oh, they're alluaudia).  They usually are upright, this one was on the ground.

By the way, if you want to check out a really amazing blog, look at Danger Garden - which is a great name, and a great blog.  Loree's blog is a fabulous resource and inspiration!

Besides the Desert Garden, there are other amazing gardens to check out - the Japanese Garden, the Chinese Garden, a Rose Garden, a Palm Garden.  And some great pieces in the art collection as well, like this pair of Ghirlandio portraits

And Harriet Hosmer's "Zenobia in Chains". My students studied both of these in AP Art History when I taught high school.

 

I wanted to visit the conservatory, but it was just so humid and hot inside that I couldn't stay for too long.  Beautiful plants inside, and a long spiral walkway that goes down - lots of great, educational bits.  I'm going to go back in the fall or winter when the outside weather is cooler and I can stay inside for longer.  I did stop in long enough to check out the carnivorous plants.

I had a lovely day, but oh were my feet killing me at the end of the day!  I stayed until nearly closing.  I wanted to go revisit the Japanese and Chinese gardens, but I am saving that for another trip.  Also, the Library Exhibition Hall was not open, and the Gutenberg bible and the Audubon double elephant folio edition and the Chaucer manuscript are all things I'd love to visit, so when they get those pieces set up I'll be back to check them out.