Busy Saturday

This last weekend was our first phase of removing the wall-to-wall lawn designation from our backyard. Too bad there is no before picture to precede the after, but just imagine grass all the way to the fence, with the slope of the yard continuing down toward the fence. Oops, including all the way to the trunks of the trees. (View from south to north, then from north to south - the blue spruce is in the south east corner of our backyard.)

I used some cardboard, but mostly sections from the lawn that I cut out to cover grass. Hopefully it doesn't grow through. Because I didn't dig up the trees that were planted by the previous owner, I'm keeping a circle clear around the trunk of each tree, but we will probably continue to build up the height of the border around these "clearance circles" for greater effect. Eventually, we'll plant smaller flowers/ground coverings on the hills of the border - or better yet, maybe more strawberries! (View of "clearance circle" around one of the apple trees.)

We'll also cover it with mulch once we complete excavation...

The last picture is an effort to remove any trace of bindweed root from our backyard. Actually, it is an early stage of the future garden location that will include combination container boxes/cold frames since we planted one of the new apple trees in the middle of the current garden location. After excavation is complete, we will build a retaining wall. It will also be a more efficient use of the north east corner that wasn't being covered by the sprinkler system. As you can see, it is now being used to "store" or mulch sections cut out from the lawn for the five new fruit trees we planted (not pictured).

I'm attempting to "harvest" rock from the excavation for a gravel floor around the future boxes.

Everything's coming up Roses!

A little blurp on the roses in our garden. Although the primary crop in my farm-belt hometown in Southern California was Roses, I didn't spend too much time learning the tricks of that trade (except to discover, on a rose field tour during a festival, that although people sometimes stole plants from the fields, all they had to do was take a cutting to grow a new plant). At any rate, at my first home as a married adult, I thought I did a decent job tending the bed of roses we inherited with the property only to discover completely different types in our garden (not to mention a completely different climate) when we moved to Utah!

There are four types, if not varieties of the 9 plants we have...


The first, and my favorite, is the yet to be identified ever-bloomer. These three bushes appear to bloom, and then the bloom lasts for months. Sometimes it starts out sort of orange and gets deeper red, but once in full bloom, they just look good until they dry out, which seems like weeks or even a month!















On the opposite side of the spectrum are the climbing roses. We have the Golder Shower climber (from the tag left on it, first picture) and probably another, although not quite as vigorous a grower, yellow rose (close-up second picture). Although these two produce dozens and dozens of roses, they tend to go quickly and the flower opens up and then drops petals within the week. My list of things to do includes trying to figure out where this falls in regards to nature vs. nurture.



































The Climbing Blaze is another climber that looks like it's been through a lot, but has bright red blossoms that add a lot of color.





















The last three are very different than the others. Instead of full blossomed roses, these provide flashes of color with just a few petals on each flower. They are in a cluster of three bushes that would quickly run into each other if spared the clippers. While they do add nice color and seem to be pretty tough, they are also much smaller in cane size, leaf size, and, of course, flower size.