8:29 AM

Wild, Crazy and Beautiful

Last winter was hard on my yard. I lost some rare, hybridized hibiscus, all of my palms (except the huge Medjool in the front) experienced severe setbacks, and Bermuda grass took over the flower beds. As you may have read from one of my previous posts, I decided to tackle this early in the spring this year. Instead of dealing with each and every strip of Bermuda grass growing throughout my flowerbeds, I did a complete overhaul of them. Eric dug up the Pygmy in the front yard and the sago that had outgrown our small front flowerbed, and then I went to town cleaning everything out, putting in new plants, dirt and mulch.


After completing the front yard, I only got about halfway through with the backyard before life began to happen (shuttle mission support, final exams at school, etc.). In the backyard, I'd placed some white petunias around one of the sagos (and had planned on putting some matching ones around the other but haven't gotten to it yet), and some purple petunias with white stripes near two stacks of limestone rocks. Both were originally very tiny plants. In fact, the white ones were those teeny-tiny starters that are roughly $2 or so for a pack of 6? The purple-and-white striped ones were actually only one plant each, $4 each from Home Depot, and were in small 6" pots. They were planted in April, look at them now!


Beautiful petnuias in my backyard
Beautiful petnuias in my backyard

Granted, things look like a mess there around the tortured queen palm. There are reasons for that. I planted things temporarily around the queen when I ran out of time so that they would be alive when I found the time again, and my Excavator thought it would be a great idea to see how hard he could tug on the Queen Palm last winter. Thank goodness he lost interest before it snapped.


Mikado, the Excavator

(Deep sigh...) I absolutely love a colorful yard. Hopefully, we'll get some rain soon so that my water bill can go down!

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