how I spent my morning...

I finally got fed up with my neighbors non-mowing situation, and had to take matters into my own hands... Weed grasses were encroaching into my relatively new rock garden. Not acceptable...


And what's that hiding in the grass?

It's one of those viscious killer predators that terrorise the surbaban jungles!

And here's how it finally turned out.

No, it's not the best job, and it is a little chewed up, and it's not how grass should be treated, but it ain't mine and I don't care...

about 15 minutes after I'd finished, who should show up but the new owner next door... he asked what was up and I told him I'd just mowed part of his lawn... And he apologised profusely.

He hasn't moved in yet, because there's some work that needs done on the house before they do... and he'd hired somebody to mow once a week... evidently the idgit has taken care of the front yard but not the back alley... he then asked if he could borrow the weedeater before the other neighbors went haywire.

Hey, it's cool. I don't particularly like yard work, but I don't HATE it. And at least you can look at it and know you've achieved something... of course, Phennig (the cat) is infuriated at me now. It seems he thinks I won't let him have any fun.

cactus in the ground!

Well, here's one of the appallingly badly packed ferocactus, in his new home in my front rock garden.

The other four are currenly in 4 inch terra cotta pots... which are probably slightly too big for them but I didn't have any other pots handy, so there we are... I'm sure they'll be fine, despite their ordeal in the envelope.

One other thing I should mention... someone once told me that if you write things down, it makes them happen... something about getting your subconscious to work for you, or guardian angels or higher selves... (some new age silliness... considering who told it to me, it could have been any one of those things, but I'm not entirely sure which it is now. Personally I think it boils down to "If you know what you want it's easier to get it.")

The point of this is that I mentioned a few posts back that I was making a list of winter hardy cactus that I wanted for the yard.

Well, I walked into Lowes, right after I picked up my truck, because I wanted to buy a little piece of nothing that I needed for a repair job... and I saw a cactus sitting on their plant clearance rack. In really beautiful shape... not at all like the others on the rack which were beat up beyond redemption... I grabbed it without even giving it a second thought... and after I got it home, I looked at the tag, and it's an Oreocereus celsianus, aka Peruvian Old Man Cactus. The tag said not to let it get below 45 degrees, but I'm pretty sure that's what it says on all the cactus tags at lowes.

Well, it's on my list. The first plant I wrote on my list... (erie, huh?)

I since researched a little more... conflicting info and all, and it's definitely hardy to 10 degrees, so I'll be putting him in the rock garden this weekend... and I'll take a pic of him in his new home. The real problem will not be the cold, but the heat... they are native to high, mountainous deserts, and summer heat may stress him...

Work was good. Air Conditioning is a wonderful thing.

And now I'm making a new list.

I want a new truck. I want a greenhouse. I want a house on five acres. I want 10 million dollars...

Hey, if it works for plants, why not?
Later.

less than 24 hours later...

I just finished this garden strip yesterday, (actually, see yesterdays post all about it) and some dweeb runs off the alley and into my rock garden today! Seriously, there's over 15 feet of alley out there, if you are incapable of staying on it, you shouldn't be allowed to drive!


Look up there^


They cracked a fossil in half! It's been around for several tens of thousands of years, and this incompetent cracks it in half! Un-freaking believable!



I'm just venting, I've already rebuilt the damage, and I can only hope that nothing else happens anytime soon... Yes, it's annoying, but far worse things have happened on the planet. And as for them being an incompetent dweeb, I have no idea really... all I know is that it was fine when I left this morning and it was run over when I came home tonight.



Otherwise, it was actually a pretty good day.

There was this in the back of a warehouse I saw today... maybe it's that I've been doing too much rock gardening, but the first thing that went through my mind was... 'They need some prickly pears back there. And some agaves... maybe a few of those hardy ferocactus too... and an ocotillo...

And then, as I was sitting in my truck in a store parking lot, reading my book and waiting for my next call... I heard a little chirp and I looked up to see this guy less than 10 feet outside my drivers window... A scissortail flycatcher was sitting there waiting for me to take a pic, and getting a little impatient with me...
Then he showed off his profile...

before his wife showed up and reminded him that there were chicks to feed and he didn't have time to resume his career as a super model.
you can tell this is the female, because the tails shorter.

And that was my day...

My little garden project...

I spent all weekend planting my back alley...

The problem was this. There's about a 3 feet wide strip beside my carport that had to be mowed... and it was a real pain in the backend to drag the lawn mower out there. Usually, when the neighbors mowed, they would go ahead and get all of it. Or when I mowed, I'd get all of it... However, it's rental property, so when I mowed it once last year, the rentors decided they didn't ever have to mow it again. To be fair, they weren't too up on mowing their front yard either, but this year I decided that I'd put down gravel and a rock garden, and any grass left in that strip was not my problem... We'll see how the new tenants feel about it... Here's the finished result...



and here's what I started with...

The wheel-barrow I found on the side of the road on trash day... The wheel basically don't work no more, but I ain't moving it anywhere, so who cares? I punched a few holes in the bottom for drainage, filled it with top-soil and pea gravel, and planted it...
These are rocks that I've been collecting over the last few months, and there are some fossils in there too... the gravel on this is decomposed granite. I used that because 1) it looks good and 2) it packs into a kind of 'crust' that resists being washed away...

This is really an experiment... the grass in there is variegated St. Augustine... in other words, variagated lawn grass. The prickly pear cuttings are nopales from the grocery store... this is a variety that won't mind the extra water I give the grass, and will grow very quickly... They won't however survive the winter here, and will probably die with the first frost. Of course I'll probably be eating them all summer...

In the middle is an old table leg that I was going to use for some project or other, I forget what.

Anyway, the St. Augustine should grow like a demon and fill the tub... strange because it's being sold more as a house or patio plant than anything else, although feasably, I could just let it run crazy and have the first variagated lawn on the block...

Looking at the pics now, there's probably some things that will be reworked over the next few weeks. But it was hot out there, and after 2 days of wrestling with rocks, gravel, and spiney plants... I'm really relieved that I actually finished, and I kind of feel like I actually accomplished something for a change...

The neighbors seem ok with it... or everybody kept slowing down to look as they drove down the alley at least. Most of them smiled and waved... One guy scowled but I've never seen him do anything but scowl anyway... I'm the only person in the neighborhood whose ever planted anything in the alley, and I'm kinda hoping that eventually I'll inspire everybody else. But this is a first-time buyers neighborhood, almost everybody who buys here has never owned a home before and is moving straight in from an apartment. They tend to know very little to nothing about gardening.

I was taking the trash out for the sanitation workers this morning, when I saw this out of the corner of my eye...


a bit of a surprise actually, it's been raining and a little on the chilly side all week. I had seen the buds last week, but I thought that they'd wait for some sun and heat... this close-up isn't the best, but it is in the wee hours of the morning, so the light isn't the best...

There's a pic of this Echinopsis in this post, back when I first planted the rock garden last March... http://lpfleamarket.blogspot.com/2008/03/winter-hardy-cactus.html I have no idea of the species, as it was sold to me as 'Echinopsis species' If I get any seed pods off of it, I might try to sprout them, but there are many many Echinopsis hybrids out there. I'm not sure what may turn up...

As stated in the above post, this was sold to me as winter hardy to at least 20 degrees... and it certainly survived last winter. And from looking at the pics, I need to get out there this weekend and pull out some weeds...

have a great day everyone...