A Bunch of Trees

I couldn't find a collective noun describing "a random collection of trees" - things like copse, orchard, stand, etc. all refer to a group of the same type of tree.

I'm a dork.  You know, in case you hadn't already figured that out.

Anyway, allow me to present to you my own personal bunch of trees:

Front Yard

The Measley Oak in the front yard, sometimes called
"Builder's Oak" or "I wish I had the money to replace this".
(It's a Texas Live Oak, and will grow to be far to large for my
yard. Thanks, builders). 

That's it!  Thanks, bye.


 Back Yard

Mulberry Tree, only six years old, which started out as a wee seedling. 

A Mexican Orchid Tree, actually a great shaggy shrub,
pruned to a tree form last year for the first time. 

A wee Chasteberry, only a year old, Spring 2012

More on all of them as time goes on. :)


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Evolution of An Herb Garden

One of the things I'll be doing this coming Spring is re-vamping what used to be my herb garden.  Into...not one.  I haven't yet decided what I'll do for an herb garden next, to be honest; but I know the space it was in before is shabby and overgrown and defunct. Part of the process of spiffing up the lawn includes returning to lawn to that space.

But first...

This was the first herb garden I built in my "new" house in 2004.  It doesn't look like much - this pic was taken in 2007 as I was demo-ing the whole thing to make way for the new patio project.  Plants are gone, pots all over the place, soaker hoses all wonky.

But before this, it was a pretty little semi-circle of fragrant forest to sit behind on a cool day on the back porch.

The patio project was a 152sf Quikrete Walkmaker project - not only was the slab surface covered with cement "cobblestones", but also a 9x12' area on the ground in front of it, to make one large surface.

The dip in the center is where two photos were spliced together, sorry. :)  An 18" border wrapped around the entire thing, and this is where I planted my herbs:

Summer, 2007.   Little did I know at the time that it was going to rain every single day from February through mid-August.  Those orange Cosmos in the back corner (hiding a compost bin) got to nearly twelve feet tall!

You can see here, it wasn't long before weeds starting breaking through the mortar.  I'd mixed my mortar with sand by half, like you're supposed to...not realizing that the mortar mix I bought was already sanded. Oops.

In 2009 I took up all the stones, chipped the mortar off of them entirely, and replaced them in a different pattern - concentric circles which I hoped looked like ripples in a pond.  I also created that wee round garden with the Buddha statue in it as an island in the patio surface.

A year later, the Martian Death Fungus hit; and the year after that, that soul-sucking damned drought.  My fluffy little fence of herbs around a pretty patio was no more.

This is what it looked like as of Fall 2012.  A single white Yarrow survived both the MDF and the drought.  The lawn doesn't look like much in this shot, but trust me, this is greatly improved over the previous year, and a pretty good-looking lawn for a woman who has three mid-sized dogs as well, I think.







So what's next for this space?  More lawn.  Sounds boring, I know, but I have a plan.  It involves moving a LOT of cobblestones.  Kill me now.


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Once Upon A Garden

You know the story of why I stopped gardening two years ago, and that I'm re-booting this year.  But how did it all start?  With two extra tomato plants. When I was twenty-three, my mother had been gardening for about a year, and was still in the new gardener phase - you know the one, where you buy WAY more plants than you actually need, go nuts ordering from seed catalogs, and hunt down every gadget made of green plastic you can find?  Heh.

She swore she'd suck me into gardening, and I did resist as long as I could.  Then one day, she showed up at my house with two extra cherry tomato plants, begging me to give them a home.  "Put them in the compost bin!" I suggested; but she wasn't having any of that noise. She wanted them loved and cared for, and as much as I did NOT want a garden, I thought, fine, how hard could it be to just dig a couple of holes?  Famous last words, as they say.

At first I tried hard to only keep my gardening to the useful plants - vegetables, medicinal herbs, herbs for tea, bushes and things that would yield stakes and stalks I could recycle and use in the garden.  I decided right away that it would only be organic gardening for me.  Useful. Practical. Economical. Safe. Earth-friendly.

Yeah, that lasted.  At least, the last part did.  I held out for many years before I succumbed to *pink* flowers, but it was only a year before flowers in general started creeping in.  It started with the strawberry plants, I believe.

After all...isn't beauty useful?  Of course it is.  If not beauty, then what else?  Whole worlds opened up before me.

Sadly, I have very few pictures left of those first years, which happened before instant-mobile-phone-uploads and online sync-able photo galleries.  Most of my gardens for years were in containers, because I was a renter.  

It wasn't until I bought my house in 2004 that I could really tear up the ground and just go nuts the way I'd always wanted to.  And I did...right up until 2010, and you know the rest.

Hope is a thing with leaves.

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One Small Step For A Front Porch

There's a lot new going on at home, folks, so this one will be quick and dirty (pardon the pun).

Once Upon A Time: 

Every year, actually with new plants.  This was 2010, with Hostas and Purple Heart. 

Before: 

Empty containers. 

After:  

Begonias and ferns in the silver planters; plus a Fernleaf Lavender
and a strawberry I haven't planted in the front bed yet. :) 

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The Pink Day

More actual posts coming soon, I swear.  :)


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Housey Planties

Although I haven't been doing much around the yard since the clusterf* of 2010 and 2011, I never stopped being an avid houseplant keeper.   Let me introduce you to some of my little friends:

Living room window corner, behind a little divan/settee.  L-R Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia reginae), "ZZ" plant (Zamioculcas), Peace Lily (Spathyphyllum), "Janet Craig" Dracaena, and a sad-looking little Pothos Ivy hanging above.  

An Elephant Foot Palm (Beaucarnia revurvata) with a haircut, after one of my
cats nearly ate the entire thing. It's been recuperating for a long, long time.  

Dracaena Warneckii and a Philodendron in my
home office.  

And unknown little succulent, and a Fittonia

One of a pair of  Ficus trees I have in my living room. 

A wee Ming Fern (Plumosa)

Houseplants at work:  Peace Lily,  a pot of of baby Ponytail
Palms (also Bearcarnia recurvata), a "Lucky Bamboo" Dracaena,
and a little Dieffenbachia.  And a crab. 

I have eighteen houseplants in all, at the moment, not counting the cuttings rooting in jars all over the place, or half a potato in a bowl of water in the kitchen, hehe.  I also have four of my houseplants at my office, so, twenty-two in total


So basically, not nearly enough. :)

I would love to live here. 
More at  my Pinterest board on greenhousey living spaces