On Ongoing Project

I have had this ongoing project ever since we moved in to the house 3 years ago. When we bought the house, the previous owners had started a backyard project, but had never finished it. It involved chunks of broken concrete that they had used to start building a raised flower bed. They had never actually completed the thing, so there was a pile of concrete chunks and a pile of dirt in the yard. They had run water to the area and had planted two citrus trees, but the trees were dead, there was grass growing up in it, and the whole thing was a big eyesore.





Our first winter here I finished building up the


bed, took out the dead trees and grass, moved the dirt


around, and if I do say so myself, had it looking about


300% better than it was. Down on the far end there was


some sort of desert tree that had come up voluntarily, and


there was some really pretty red and purple lantana planted


at both ends. It sort of just sat there like that for a year or so. The soil is so bad I wasn't really sure what to do with it.



When we bought our trailer and brought it in to the backyard to park it the first time, I realized that this thing was going to be a problem. Rick was not able to swing the truck wide enough to get it parked where we wanted it. Also, it was mostly just taking up space.


So, last winter I got this bee up my butt and decided it needed to go. But, what to do with it? Well, Rick came home
from work one day to find that I had thrown all the concrete over the fence and had rebuilt the bed on the outside and I was in the process of taking out the dirt one wheelbarrow full at a time around and filling it up.

There is no sidewalk over there. Just about 15 feet of dirt that slopes down to the curb and street.

By moving it outside the fence we got the space we needed to manuever the truck and trailer. It also makes the backyard look bigger.

In the front yard the previous owners had planted a cassia bush. These are fantastic desert plants. Once it gets big it is very dense, so it is a great privacy screen. And, they need NO water. We had three of them in our front yard in Las Vegas that survived completely on the limited rain that we got. Because the one in our front yard does get a little water, it is also very prolific. We get dozens of little starts from it, so I have been transplanting them to the new bed. Down at the far end of the picture you can see how some of them have taken off. I just planted some starts in the foreground that should be fairly established by summer. Once they are grown they will provide some privacy from the street and best part of it is, it was completely FREE!