Where's the Spicket?

Do you know what's not helpful with a front yard garden bed?  A backyard spicket, an eight foot fence, and a crappy hose.  After many agonzing attempts at pulling that hose over the fence and trying to get all the kinks out so that I could actually water, I gave up and started making multiple trips from my kitchen with a watering can.  While this was less frustrating, it took a lot of time. 

So I would ask questions like, "Can't we put a gate on this side of the house?" But then Paul would explain why that would be more difficult than what he had in mind.  Okay...so what did he have in mind?  He had a genius idea actually and today it finally came to fruition. 

Today was mulch day.  I had been waiting until all the tree hassle was over with because what's the point of putting down mulch if it's just going to be covered with sawdust?  While I was wandering around the garden center picking out all the things I eventually want to do, Paul disappeared and was gone for quite awhile.  When he did reappear he had various metal connectors, an iron hose reel and a 75' kink free hose.  My hero.

This whole project took about fifteen minutes.  The splitter was attached first and then a 15' hose was attached and snaked under the fence until it came to chest height.  Then Paul put a shut off valve between the 15' hose and the kink free hose, and wrapped it around the hose reel.  We put the old hose on the other side of the splitter and now we can water both the front and back hassle free.

Knowing Your Zone

Like any normal person who likes to play in dirt, planting flowers was my number one desire once we were all moved in.  Originally the front garden consisted of some shrubs that I found boring and a couple of rose bushes that needed some serious love.  I ripped out the shrubs completely, which was lot more work than it sounds like.  Then I went to the nursery without doing any research whatsoever on plants that would grow in Houston.  The problem with Houston?  It's really hot.  I made a lot of mistakes with my purchases, but I had one genius moment.  I grant you, it was a fluke, but I have to give myself some credit.

Let's talk about my mistakes first.  Considering the difference between annuals and perennials when planting is very important...yeah, I didn't do that the first year.  So my garden looked really great for about a month.  Then came the heat and the drought and almost everything died, because of my second mistake, having a watering schedule and amending it to account for the heat.  I'm going to do a whole post on watering but just know at this point I had no clue what I was doing.  So once again, death in my garden. 

My genius move though was buying two plumbago plants.  These are Texas native, perennial flowering shrubs and they have saved my sanity.  I love them.  Paul and I talked about raising the garden bed up a few years ago and I outright refused because it would mean pulling up the plumbago.  The past two winters we have actually had some pretty long freezes and I've been worried that they were gone for good, but every Spring they're back and blooming.  Again, I love them.

That tiny blue flower in the middle is the first bloom of the season, soon I will have four feet covered in those flowers.

So I learned my lesson pretty quick.  Drought resistant Texas native perennials are the way to go.  Last year I planted a Gold Esperanza and Purple Salvia and just yesterday I planted a Silverado Sage.  I still use annuals to add color during the spring and summer months but even with care and watering they tend to fail me on a regular basis.  My lesson this year was that Gerber Daisies are just not going to make it in my garden.

I kept the original roses from when we bought the house and last year was the first good year they had so I decided to add another one, we'll see how it does.

The Passing of Time

When we bought our house four years ago, I had delusions of how much we would change and improve within the first year of living here.  What I conveniently forgot was that changing and improving take time and money.  Time is precious and we both work full time jobs and have six cats who have their own quirky issues that add a lot to our daily routine.  Money though was the main factor, and one I still like to forget whenever I can.

Fast forward four years.  We have made improvements, some.  We have painted the interior front half of the house and replaced most of lighting fixtures.  The floors are in desperate need of attention and the bathrooms both need some work but for now our main focus is the yard.  I love to garden, but that doesn't mean that I knew anything about maintaining a yard when we bought this house.  I have perpetually lived in apartments my entire life, so I was completely clueless when it came to basic maintenance and knowing what would grow and what wouldn't.  The fact that we had moved from Colorado to south Texas also didn't help matters.

Long story short, we killed the grass.  Killed it good and proper.  I would like to say this was on purpose, but who really wants to look outside and see dirt?  Not I.

But now there's a plan!  We've made some changes already.  We had a dying tree removed which helped immensely but also added to the dirt pile.  When my dad said, "Make sure to take pictures so you can see your progress," I thought it would be fun to share our journey of bringing our yard back to life, so here we go.

This was the yard after we mowed the lawn for the first time.  Isn't the grass beautful?  Don't get used to it.  The tree closest to the house, a maple, was just taken down because it was seriously ill, and the other tree, a live oak, was recently pruned.  Before both of these things happened though, the lawn was being massacred by dead leaves.  We couldn't rake them up fast enough, which in turn is why the grass died.

This is the yard now.  The next few weeks will tell if we're up to the task, but I think we are.