Spring garden surprise

Sometimes you are surprised by what happens under your very nose.  As I went into winter my front yard was a mess of scraggly twigs and under-acheiving plants overwhelmed by an uncontrolled growth of Russian Sage.

Russian Sage is a nice robust plant but it is invasive and aggressive and spreads underground to pop up from under rocks yards away from the parent plant. Letting it run wild in an enclosed yard is a disaster. I want one bush...not ten...so I've declared war and have been fairly ruthless in cutting and destroying the invasive offspring and completely killing off two large bushes, I have one left and it is under control, mostly.

Much to my surprise, the twiggy war zone of mid-winter turned into a thing of beauty when spring arrived. Here are some pictures...

Pyracantha

A variety of Scotch Broom

Goldfish Pond

Mexican Bird of Paradise tree

New Mexico Willow

Even the sky gets into the act

Buddy, my adopted quail 

I was about to have much of this ripped out because it looked so bad last winter. The Russian Sage tried to kill off one of the Bird of Paradise trees but they have both survived.  The sage is by the gate and it will be blooming next.  My Red Photensia bush already bloomed --- it looked like a viburnum with red leaves. It is next to the waterfall.  I have a Mountain Mahogany on the outside of the wall that looks better and bloomed early. My wild rose bush bloomed once and my Lilac bloomed even though it is onlt two feet tall.

Building my Bocce Court

The previous owner of my house was a "Granola Person" as my realtor called him.  He and his wife were nice people who had great expectations for life in the desert. They were a live and let life couple. They went to considerable lengths to construct a raised vegetable garden with about seven 4' by 8' planter boxes and the whole thing was fenced in to keep the rabbits and other vegetarian wildlife out.  But this is desert and you barely can get anything to grow, let alone a vegetable garden.  So, the experiment failed and when I moved in the garden was deteriorating and filled with  salt bush, tumbleweeds and trash. A large compost heap was baking in the desert sun and not really converting anything to soil.

I wanted a bocce court and saw an opportunity to salvage the garden boxes and  convert the garden boxes and other wood used in the garden as the basis for my bocce court. The project was a little bigger than I planned and my neighbor joined in the project about halfway through. We got it done in about five weeks -- including spreading 8 tons of crushed stone for the surface,

The pictures show the general progress of the project.

Demolition

Finished

We have had a few games and it is a little difficult getting used to the surface. We rake it and water it periodically to get the crushed stone to solidify a little more. The climate is so dry that we did not have to install drainage.