Wild roses (couldn't drag me away)

Since the gazebo is about 12 foot tall, I'm guessing the rose bush is...9 feet?

Last spring when we had our first contractor come in to give us a bid on remodeling the backyard, he could not get over our taller-than-us iceberg roses. He snapped pictures to send to his wife and kept telling us, "I had no idea roses could get this big -- I love them!"

Our iceberg roses stand about nine feet tall, and when they bloom the white-on-green color is amazing. It's especially beautiful by moonlight.  In our last home, we had a Mojave rose we allowed to do the same thing, and every spring it was a profusion of sunrise colors in our back yard.

Big bushes.

I believe in letting things take their natural shape and size whenever possible. These roses had been kept to about a two-foot height by the gardening company that kept the yard tidy for the lady who lived here before. And yet, apparently they always wanted to be larger. So when I realized how many of the neighbors' lights were blocked out by having larger rose bushes (giving us a darker sky and better view of the stars), I decided to let them become what they wanted to be. I prune them in January every year, taking a couple of feet off, and I dead-head after each bloom, but they recover quickly.

I also have a Bay Laurel "tree" that seems quite committed to becoming a bush, so I'm allowing it to do that. I had a tomato plant last year that wanted to sprout in November, so I let that happen and it's overwintered and is now ready to produce fruit.

Over-wintered tomato in January. It's twice this size now.

Some plants you can't allow to run wild. I have coyote brush outside and if I let it go it would crowd space that's designated for other plants, so I have to keep it within bounds. Other plants I will allow to blossom before cutting them back to where they should be. 

But where you can, why not let gardening be a little bit fun and see what natural shape and size some plants will grow into? Not knocking the well manicured hedge or the symmetrical 2-foot rose bushes that are pruned down to their canes every year, but it almost seems that plants can and should reflect their owners, so I guess it's no surprise that my garden will be a little unorthodox and rebellious. 

I like my roses wild, thank you. Like my life.

Backyard progress

Patio is almost done.

As you can see, we are making progress on the backyard landscape. I'm really pleased with my choice in flagstones, and the fire pit (with safety grate -- no brush fires here!) will be a very nice addition to the entertaining space. Today they are adding the border and sand to fill in the joists, plus bordering the fire pit (we will be bringing in the gravel ourselves in order to save some money).

We have dreamed of doing this since we moved in three years ago, but there were other priorities for the house that took precedence. And then of course,we had to save up some bucks, so we could pay cash for this and not incur any debt. (Maybe I should just have done a kickstarter campaign instead lol)

Future fire pit.

The next steps will be waiting until the rainy season and using a sod-buster to level some areas where there is dead turf so we can add bark without making it higher than the patio or fire pit. So we have a bit of a reprieve until the rainy season really gets going in earnest. 

One thing the landscaper told us is that the type of soil we have is almost impossible to grow a healthy turf on. From looking at the grass he had to remove, he said the roots were very shallow and the grass was just generally unhealthy. One more reason to stick with native plantings.

But we're well over halfway done at this point, and it's easy to see how its all going to look once its finished. And with only cosmetic stuff plus some planting going on, the bulk of the hard labor is over, too.

Good luck omen over the site?

More lawn removal

Here's an ariel shot of the domestic end of our homestead -- our house and yard. Our acreage is off to the left side of this photo and can't be seen in it, but it's there, just down the hill beyond those trees.

If you see the highlighted areas in the image, that represents the second portion of lawn we will be killing and getting rid of this summer, as part of our back yard renovation plan. As you can see, the front yard has already had its lawn removed and drought-tolerant landscaping has been put in.

So if we took out half the lawn in putting in our front yard landscaping, raised beds, and chicken coop/run on the right side of the house, this new project will remove about half of the half that's left. Meaning in three years, we've taken out 75 percent of our water sucking, useless, non-edible lawn, which should bring us to a point of well exceeding the State's mandate that we reduce usage by 25 percent, due to the current drought.  

I'd love to take out even more, but we are leaving a bit of lawn on the back and side of the house, first because we can't landscape over our septic tank, and second because we plan on having a fire pit and want to be able to apply the sprinklers to it if it's ever necessary, since it's rather close to the house.

So I'm already excited, dreaming of what's going to go onto those highlighted areas -- more Spanish lavender, more red hot pokers, and more ceanothus, plus some other natives I've been wanting to try -- including milkweed, main food for the lovely Monarch Butterflies that live around here part of the year. Plus a larger patio area for entertaining. Who says water conservation can't be beautiful?

And the best part is that easiest phase of the project comes  first: shutting off the water in those zones, sitting back and letting the summer sun bake the unwanted portions of lawn into dead, yellow straw, which we can then just landscape over. 

And then the creative planning and real physical work begins, probably next winter.

All part of moving things forward in a (very) dry land.