Temporary Victories

I spent 6 exhaustive hours outside Sunday working on my backyard, and when I was done I had scored lots of temporary victories.  Why temporary?  Well, I’ve won so far in that 15 plants are now in the ground, but only time will tell if I really win as they’re now all going through their adjustment period.  If they live, I win…if they don’t, I get to start over!

The first and most difficult victory was moving the palm tree from the backyard to the front.  It was the only thing in the backyard that needed water and since I don’t have any sprinklers out back, the tree didn’t get watered as often as it should.  It was very happy back there, but I wanted it to move to the front where it would regularly watered by the sprinkler system.

It took me an hour to grab as many roots as possible, and included one face full (and eyeful) of dirt, but the tree is moved…

The tree looks great in its new home, especially when looking outside from in.  Here’s hoping the palm only experiences a minor adjustment period!

Here are some select pix of some of the plants out back.  Many are small so they don’t look like much, but hopefully they will be an awesome mix of texture, color, height and shape once they get larger.

See this Feathery Cassia bush?  It sits in the corner where the palm tree used to live.  The greenery behind it is ground cover from the outside of the neighborhood – it has inched into my backyard through the space in the block wall.  I’m leaving it for now but it may need a haircut soon.

Here’s the whole corner…

From left to right there are 4 other plants — a zig zag cactus, a desert spoon cactus, a Dwarf Bottlebrush bush and on the far right, barely visible next to the stepping stone is a fairy duster bush.  The flowers on this are AWESOME!  So awesome that I’ve got a close-up for you…

I can’t wait for this guy to get big!

Now here’s looking at the rest of the backyard from the above area…

Remember that most of the plants are small so you can’t really see them from this picture.  I’ll give you a tour…

This cactus container was labelled as Eve’s Needle.  After doing some research on-line I’m not sure if it is, but it’s definitely got character!  The pinky protrusions on the top will be flowers…soon…I hope!  This guy is near the block wall.

Below is a picture of my California Lilac (still smells awesome) with three mounds of grass in front of it.  I’m hoping that once the grasses get taller they’ll add lots of motion to the yard…

Here’s a Madagascar Palm…

As this guy grows the greenery will remain at the top and the trunk will be that gray colored, thorn filled tube.

I also bought a couple of succulents for good measure…they’re definitely small but they show up well in the red mulch!

I’m not sure of the correct name for the above, but I call it Crazy Hair!  The below is called Crazy Bunny according to the pot it came in.

Lastly, here’s the California Sunflower plant – it’s right in front of the swing and if it grows and spreads like it should the swing will have an awesome blanket of yellow in front of it.

There’s another Desert Spoon plant in this area along with 2 plants that I’m not showing you because, well, their survival is very iffy.  They weren’t too happy with their extended pot life so they’re not camera worthy right now.  There are also 7 more plants that need to go into the ground — I’m hoping to get at least 1 of them in tonight as we’re in for showers tomorrow & Thursday, cool temps for the week and more showers on Monday.  That’ll be perfect weather for transplants!

But, why am I hoping to get just ONE in the ground?

Two reasons —

1.  I have clay soil – that means I have to swing a pickax to break up the ground.  Honestly!  So far I’ve used 4-1/2 bags of the 5 bags of soil amendment I bought to mix with the clay so the new plant roots don’t get squished as the clay gets wet and compacts!

2.  In order to plant that 1 plant, a butterfly bush, I have to move this other path, or at least get it out-of-the-way…

The path that’s coming at you from the patio area needs to be straightened out and shifted to the right so that it comes off the main path at more of a right angle.  The butterfly bush is going to go where the solar light to the left of the yellow rope now sits.   The agave I want to plant will go in the vicinity of that brick sitting in the mulch to the right of the yellow rope, its position finalized once the path is marked.

And the final plant that’s going back there will be somewhere in front of the AC unit.  I’m not really worried about exactly where as I have a bigger problem then it’s location.

I have to figure out how to get this Golden Barrel cactus out of the pot without pricking myself multiple times!

The plants should all be in and the stepping-stones piled in the fire bowl area should all be in their new homes on Saturday.  The paths should be nearly done if, and that’s a big IF, Mother Nature dries us out for a couple of days.  The sand base will not spread nicely if the sand is damp and clumpy.

I can finally see the light at the end of this backyard overhaul tunnel and I’m beginning to believe that it’s not a train!  Once it’s done I’ll be able to move onto my next outdoor project — taming the morning glories that have gone wild…soooo wild!

To put a smile on your face, here is my front garden full of happy and bright gazanias.  Yep, this is them smiling up at the sun, each flower is about 3-4″ in diameter…