Gardening

My favorite part about gardening is watching how everything grows. It amazes me that one day our entire front gardening plots will be full of mature bushes like Green Hopseed, Euryop Daisys, and Fairy Dusters. Our Agave and Aloe varities will continue to grow and there is still open space for new perennials and ever changing choices for annuals each new season.

I didn't walk into planting thinking that everything was going to work, there are things that I'm sure I will change including plants that will not make it through the summer or the next winter. My tastes may also grow, or some of the plants may not fit with the eventual theme of the front yard gardening area. Already I know that the lavender plants will need to be replaced. They smell amazing but they appear to be a better potted plant where I can control the water conditions more carefully. Everything in the front gardening areas are on heavy drip lines and I've read that the lavender will thrive if left more unattended.

I've also discovered that I love roses. Passionately. They are by far the most fascinating of the plants I have in the garden. They change every day. I was so nervous that they wouldn't grow when they remained unchanged the first few weeks after planting. I could not find a single website that could explain what new growth looked like, until finally I came across a photo of a newly planted rose. I then learned that new growth is red. Once I knew what to look for, I started noticing the roses were growing all the time. Because they are newly planted, nearly half of both of the rose bushes are red. Which means, that they are growing, growing, all the time. Both of the bushes have small buds, and I am watching, waiting for them to flower.

I know there is much to learn, but this is my first year. I'm slowly building my bank of gardening knowledge and experimenting with different kinds of plants. Maybe next year I'll try planting from seeds, bulbs or try an herb garden. For now, I'm trying to get the main plants for the front yard gardening area on their way to success.

Here are two photos of things I find fascinating in my garden:

Fairy Duster
I originally liked this particular plant because I noticed that it blooms in the winter. I paid special attention to what was flowering during the colder months because I wanted to make sure that my gardening areas retained some color during the winter. I also liked that the Fairy Duster was red, because it feels very holiday to me and appropriate for the season. The plant is also amazing. This picture is great because it shows how and why the Fairy Duster is named. First, the bloom on the bottom left is self-explanatory. A ton of tiny tendrils form the shape that gives the Fairy Duster its name. What is even cooler is how that happens. See the small cluster of tiny spheres on the upper right? That small cluster will EXPLODE and out will come the Fairy Duster bloom.This is how the plant spreads it seeds -they are literally shot out of the plant itself.

My camera did not cooperate in taking any photographs of the new flower buds growing on my roses, but I was able to get this shot of a few of the leaves. I noticed that the Double Delight Rose was being munched on by some critter bug. It was easy to notice at first because the missing parts were perfect semi-circular cuts. I learned this is the result of the leaf cutter bee. You can't kill the leaf cutter bee because it helps pollinate plants so is an important part of the landscaping eco-system. It's also difficult to kill anyway because it doesn't live on the plant, it merely drops by when it needs some leaves and whisks it off to build it's nest. The semi-circles are either small or large and they are basically identical to one another. I have never seen the leaf-cutter bee in action, but it would be interesting to. Although it makes my small rose bushes like odd (I'll notice it less when they are more mature) it does not harm the plant. I'm amazed that a small bee can cut such a precise shape and carry it to the nest. I'm more then happy to donate some of my rose leaves to the leaf cutter bee's home. On the bottom left and the upper right you can see the red I was talking about before. The Leaf Cutter bee has only muched on solid green leavess. New grow starts out very red and starts fading into a light pink and eventual green once matured.

Saguaro Lake

A couple weeks ago, Joe, Jake and I went to Saguaro Lake for a short day-trip. Jake brought his lab mix, Lilly, and we brought our Dobermans, Max and Sadie. We took an offroad trail and saw great scenery. Joe and Jake also enjoyed the four wheeling. Myself and the pups were a little less enthused :)

Joe, Syd and the Dobes

Our vehicle: The Four Runner!

Me (Sydney) overlooking Saguaro Lake in the background.

One of the Four Wheeling "obstacles"

Max using Sadie as a pillow

Joe Drove.. and Jake took most of the pictures

After the four wheeling we took a short hike around Saguaro Lake and let the puppies swim. Max loves the water, but this picture shows that he didn't quite having swimming down, at least not in his new, giant body. He swam with his paws out of the water like he was trying to walk on it.

Eventually, he got it. Here he is with Lilly, who won the catch the ball game every time.

Because of this, Max decided to focus his attention on getting Lilly, and not the ball.

Jake and Lilly

Jake

Four Wheeling

Lastly, here is a video of all of the dogs swimming. Lilly is obviously the most experienced and graceful of the three. This is a great example of Max trying to walk on water instead of swimming in it. And poor Sadie, who we now realize has probably never swum before in her life. She attempted to swim, but was more successful at semi-drowning. Better luck next time :

Tree Trimming

We have a massive, no....enormous.... no gargantuan Pine Tree in our front yard. It's one of the trees you would more likely see in Prescott, Payson, or Flagstaff instead of smack tab in the middle of Tempe. As much as I love having something that reminds me of cooler weather as part of my landscaping, it has already become a big pain. We have to deal with a lot of pine cones and pine needles and the tree roots have already broken our irrigation system. So, as a temporary fix we decided to just trim a majority of the bottom branches off so we would get more sunlight and less pine needles on the roof. Here is a reminder of the house before:

See how some of the tree branches are actually sweeping against our roof? Here is how they did-
the tree trimmer actually climbed up into the tree with a chainsaw and hacked everything down!


And this man caught the falling branches.

And finally, the finished project. Big tree = Big difference!!!

Landscaping, Oh My!

We began the process of landscaping our front yard immediately upon moving in. A previous blog showed Joe and Co. working on repairing damage to our irrigation system. We have also planted winter grass in the front lawn and removed all of the pre-existing shrubbery. I don't have photos to directly illustrate but there are four planting areas available in our front yard and all four had to be gutted entirely. They are the the front left, the front right, the left entry way and the right entry way. The left entry way will ultimately be filled with pavers and used as a sitting area.

Step 1: Remove all of the existing landscaping. Most of the shrubs were 3 feet high and filled in every available space. Weeds were overgrown. We removed all of the shrubs first, and came back later to remove all of the weeds until we were left with a smooth layer of dirt.



The front left landscaping area. In the small photo you can see the Oleanders that had overtaken the area. The only thing we kept were the Pygmy Palm Trees.




The front right landscaping area. Again, everything here has been removed. This area was a weed-disaster zone.




Joe had to remove the Oleander bushes and he did so with the assistance of our Toyota Fourunner. He hooked heavy duty chain around the base of all four Oleanders and yanked the root balls straight out of the ground. We are happy with our Oleander-free existence!




Step 2: Organizing the plants. Not including annuals, there are nineteen plants in the front landscaping areas. I'll discuss them more below.

Step 3: We had to fix and extend our drip line system so it would irrigate all of our new plants. As the plants grow, the drip lines will have to grow with them. It is a tedious process but essential to keep everything thriving.

Step 4: ROCK! We decided to place a rock layer over the ground. We chose a light colored stone that blends nicely with the exterior color of our house. We love the look and thinks it brings a nice finishing touch to the landscaping.

Here is a more detailed view of the front left landscaping area. We have Euryops Daisy (the yellow plant), two small rose bushes, two Agave varieties, an Aloe variety, Fairy Duster and a green Hopseed bush. The fairy duster is a red variety and difficult to see. It will be a medium-sized shrub once established.

The right front landscaping area. We planted Euryops Daisy, an Aloe variety, Green Hopseed Bush, Fairy Duster and two purple daisy annuals.

The front entry way. The vine is a Bower vine, it will produce beautiful white flowers with magenta centers. We hope to carry the vine across the arbor across our entry way. The vine is surrounded by a variety of annuals and a layer of rock has been addded here as well.

Everything is planted and the irrigation system is working. Now we have to determine how long and how often to whater, when and what to fertilize with, to make sure that we give all our plants the best chance at survival. We purchased "Moon Juice" from the nursery and this is administered to the plants weekly and is supposed to help them become established. Arizona summers are HOT and we need to give them the best shot at survival. Luckily, most plants here are well-suited for desert weather. Because we have a mild-winter many of these shrubs will flower year round and we will have color landscaping non-stop. The roses espicially will bloom through the winter once established.

Next project with the front yard: Pavers in the entry way!

Gate Project

This weekend we decided to build new gate doors for our backyard. There are two areas for gates and both were original to the house from 1984. They were at least as old as Joe! Instead of purchasing and installing a pre-built gate, Joe and Jake built the doors themselves out of Redwood 2x4's.

The old front gate (view from the sideyard)

Rear Gate which faces the alley (view from the backyard)

The Work Area

Hanging the door

We chose a redwood stain to accent the Redwood.

(below: taken by Jake)

The back of the gate was painted at night so there are no photographs of the first coat. We added the second coat on the second day, this is the final look (both taken from the backyard). If you view the door from the alley it looks the same except it has a handle, not a latch, and no beams for support.

The front gate process was the same as the back gate and it was done last. Here is what the gate looks like from the backyard.

We needed doors that were strong enough to withstand a Doberman impact. Both Max and Sadie rush to the front wall and peer over whenever they hear a noise. In case you were wondering, here is what you would see if you were looking at our house from the street.

And here is what we see....

Per the usual, Jake's dog Lilly was here to supervisor. In this photo, she has found a useful purpose for the discarded gate: Raft!

The Small Things

The smallest home improvement project Joe and I did was replacing the light switch covers with decorative ones. From top to bottom: Oak, for the loft. A deep Espresso for the Master, a warm maple for the green guest room and a faux stone for the Living/dining areas. The decorative covers are noticeable and look very nice. It is something that you usually don't notice in a home, but ours enhance each of our living areas. I still need to find a set for our guest room which has an Asian theme. I'm hoping to find bamboo ones some day. Sometimes the small things can make a big difference.