The Backyard - Two Years later (2015)

I get ill starting in the fall and through the winter and into early spring. Looks like this may be a permanent pattern (got some fun disorders, yee ha). So I just have to get my gardening done in the hottest part of the year now! It's not the easiest on the plants, but those that make it tend to be tough, heat tolerant little buggers, so perhaps it simply raises more desert awesome garden plants, in the end. 

I'm realizing some things about my gardening style. It's not tidy. It's not instantly pretty, or the type of garden that I plant so my yard looks lovely in the 'now.' I have seen gardens and yards like that and they can be awesome. They're just not for me. Or at least, not for the way I garden.

My yard is, in some ways, the one in my head when I see what it'll look like years from now. One where I hope that things will quite frequently take care of themselves to a point that it doesn't need a lot of work from me. I want a place plants, animals and I can coexist a bit more than we did before I worked on it.

The Backyard - one year later

I've been pretty much sick this entire last year, so very little forward progress has been made in my yard in terms of, well, prettying it up, as it were.

However, I have been able to get out there during the rains and see where my rain flow is going for my future rain harvesting projects. I've been able to harvest seeds from plants I like in my yard or wild areas belonging to friends, and sprinkling them around my yard, either by themselves or in small clay seed balls. I've managed to learn the names or more plants in my yard, watch what they grow with and where they grow, and so I'm not altogether unhappy with the lack of progress in other areas.

The Herb Garden

East of the original herb garden

It begins

I cannot tell you how tempted I am not to put pictures up of my yard, because it's a complete mess. The previous owners covered the entire yard with rock, but they didn't put plastic underneath it for the entire back yard. This has left us with a yard that, over the years, has become a rocky, weedy mess. It's not pretty, although the quail, the birds, and the rabbits are fairly happy with it. The rattlesnakes were a bit happy with it, too, until I put up some wire to block the two main entrances to the backyard.