Almost done now

We moved a full 10 yards of bark this weekend, in order to finish up on our backyard project. Moving bark is not difficult as its not particularly heavy, but there can be a little stress and strain from doing repetitive activities like shoveling and wheelbarrowing anything for three days. Luckily, with ibuprofen, anything is possible.

I'm thrilled with how it all came out! We'll finish up planting in a week or two and then all we have to do is construct a brick container in front of the gazebo to house my bulbs. 

Now we just need some nice weather so we can go outside and enjoy it all, but with our area in such severe drought, I won't ask for the rain to stop just yet.

Even the side yard where our chickens are housed got a spruce up with some extra bark and flagstones!

Bringing home the color -- update!

So I've come to the most fun part of the back yard landscaping project, which is picking out the plants to adorn the growing space! For us, this is the perfect time of year to plant, as it's temperate and not hot enough for the plants to get shocky when placed in the ground. And since it's supposed to be 70 degrees this afternoon -- perfect planting weather both for me as well as the plants -- I think a trip to to the nursery is in order.

I already did a diagram of how I want this section of the yard to look, ran the drip lines, etc, and so it's just a question of finding the plants themselves. I've picked drought-tolerant, easy keepers which will be a pleasure to look at but don't need a lot of work, since my work efforts are mainly centered in the vegetable and fruit growing areas of the property. 

The only plant here which requires some vigilance is the Yellow Broom, which tends to get moths laying eggs in it and then hatching, thus destroying parts of the plant. I will have to be sure and put on some bacillus thuringeinsis (BT) spray on a regular basis in the summer months to ensure I get my yellow flowers...but I think yellow flowers are worth it.

I also bought four milkweeds about a month ago, with the idea of using them in this section of the yard -- but after seeing the constant problem they have with aphids (and you can't spray them with anything other than water if the Monarchs are going to use them) I've decided they will go in some side areas where their looks will not be so important. What with old age encroaching, perhaps I should probably find a space like that for myself as well. Just put me on the side where you can't see the imperfections unless you're really close up. Ah, with plants as with life, yes?

And I'm ordering two rose bushes as well -- after the holidays, so I don't have to go down to the post office and wait in a long line of Christmas package senders and pickers-up. I'm going for one "Barbara Streisand" hybrid tea rose, which is a gorgeous lavender (to complement the blue agapanthus and lavender plants, plus the purple crape myrtle tree) plus a "Good as Gold" yellow/gold rose for an accent color. 

Since I was five years old, I've known that there's nothing better than going to the nursery to buy plants. Talk about a gift that keeps on giving, especially appropriate during this time of year.

Update: Here it is all set out in the yard, waiting to be planted...Provence lavender, foreground, couple of yellow brooms, salvia, penstemon, agapanthus and one very nice Italian buckthorn, which was a whim kind of purchase. I think it adds some nice variance in color from the natives.

I feel like I'm in the home stretch, but that's because I'm ignoring the fact that there is 9 yards of bark I have to order and move into place. Denial is SO convenient sometimes!

Patio remodel: Next step completed!

So this weekend we finished the gravel section of the patio remodel. The idea was to make a tertiary, kind of funky fire pit area with an inner and outer core of gravel and flagstone. We'll add some chairs at a later date -- I'm thinking maybe some bright red adirondack chairs around the fire pit, plus a few colorful, large urns here and there? 

The rest of this section of the yard will now be filled in by bark and drought-tolerant plants, which will be the most fun phase of things to create, since I can coordinate colorful plantings that will add some softness and some bright spots to what would otherwise be a very earth-toned landscape. 

So the next stop will be the nursery. I will be buying the smallest plants possible, knowing they will jump in growth over the next few years. So many people want things to look mature right away in terms of their landscape, but I'm content to wait until little plants grow. 

And then this project will be finished! We really can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I'm sure something new will pop up which we need to attend to sooner or later. But the major remodeling/landscaping phase of owning this home will be finished and we can finally put our feet up and enjoy it.

Drought solutions

Future flagstone patio!

As I am writing this, there is the whine of a tractor in the back yard as the landscape guys scrape off several hundred square feet of dead lawn in preparation for a flagstone patio and fire pit that will go in its place. All over the western US, people are starting to do the same thing as we are -- come up with backyard alternatives to the water-sucking lawns we no longer have enough water for.

There are lots of alternatives to grass, depending on one's budget. The flagstone patio, gravel fire pit and wood bark with a few drought-tolerant plants scattered around is pretty medium-cost. Decking is about three times as much. Artificial grass is yet another popular alternative. Leaving dead grass or dirt to just sit there costs nothing, of course, except for aesthetics and resale value. 

Future fire pit (mmmm, s'mores!)

But whatever your constraints, there is something everyone can do to lessen the drought, and killing the lawn is by far the easiest.

What we can't do is keep on watering as we have been over the last 50 years. In the last month or so I've been both to Los Angeles and Fresno, both of which are still extremely green in comparison to the county I live in. On the one hand, that's a positive because it means people here in my home county really do understand that life has to change, and are willing to do what it takes to change it. I'm proud of myself, and my friends and neighbors for that. 

On the other hand, it also means that cities with hundreds of thousands (millions for LA) of people are still not getting the message, and living life as usual. Ugh.

On another homesteading blog I read frequently, a Los Angeles couple stressed the importance of keeping trees watered in the area because trees provide shade and are beautiful. But if the trees are not native to the area, watering them is just kicking the rock down the road a little more. We need to deal with the ridiculous things we've planted in the name of them being beautiful and realize there are a lot of beautiful things we don't have here: Fireflies. Ponds. Snow. And you know what? We are OK without them. They don't belong here, but there are many, many other beautiful things that do belong here, in our dry Mediterranean climate. We're not starved for beauty by any means.

And so, here in SLO County, the waiting list for landscapers to come and do lawn removal and backyard renovation is long, as people get in on the act and start to live a different life than what their parents did. 

As for us, I'm exciting about having a new entertaining space, and although I will miss the cool green grass outside the back windows, let's face it -- it really never belonged here in the first place.

Dying Nicely

Our summer project of killing half our lawn is already off to a good start. As you can see, much of it is brown and the good news is, everything that is brown is what we WANT to get rid of. In other words, the lawn we are keeping is staying green and the lawn we're removing is dying nicely. Some more will die as the summer wears on, but we're off to a really good start.

In a way it bothers me to kill a healthy lawn; that is the farmer in me whose job it is to keep things green and growing whenever possible. But sometimes having to kill something is inevitable.  I do not smile when I see my dead lawn, instead I tend to look down at those moments and remember why it is that I have to kill it: It's so we can plant some appropriate plants in the space, or add additional patio area.  It's also so I'm not throwing good drinking water on a crop that provides nothing for us but something to look at and walk on. And most importantly, it's because if everyone is cutting back -- and even if they are not -- using less water during a drought is the right thing to do.

A time to die.

Any good farmer or homesteader should have trouble with killing living things; the day it doesn't bother you is the day you need to pack it in, buy a condo in the city, and seek the services of a professional therapist, because taking pleasure or just not caring about the times when you have to be a participant in the taking of any life is just, well, creepy.  

I find when I have to kill something, whether it's a plant or a creature, I go down  little checklist in my mind.  Question One: Is the killing necessary so that something else may live or so that something does not suffer? Question Two: Is there a better way to accomplish this rather than taking said life?  If the answer to #1 is yes, or the answer to #2 is no, then I know what I have to do.  But truthfully, there isn't a spider, ant trail, chicken or patch of grass I don't run through the aforementioned checklist with before commencing with killing it. 

Thankfully today it is only part of a lawn that has to die here, and I can honestly look forward to the things that are going to take its place.  But no matter what, I am cognizant of the fact that as the homesteader here on this particular patch of land, part of my job is deciding what lives and what dies. It's a responsibility I hope I never take lightly.

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.

Sleep, creep, leap

The front yard has never looked better, and so I thought I'd take a little "after" picture and compare it to the "before" pic, taken after we'd first finished landscaping.  The first pic was taken Spring 2013, and the most recent one was taken today, almost exactly two years later.

It's amazing how fast shrubs grow.  The trees are still on the small side, but now that they have spent a couple of years putting down roots, will probably start growing in height very soon.  How does the saying about tree growth go?  "Year One, trees sleep. Year Two, they creep.  Year Three, they leap."  This next year should be a "Leap Year," I hope so anyway. But no matter what, it is nice to see some greenery and growth when we look out our front windows.

Winter's List

My chore list for winter is now about halfway done, which is good because I saw the first Bradford pears in bloom a couple of days ago outside the local supermarket, meaning spring is just around the corner.

I don't remember spring coming in January; by my accounts that's about three weeks earlier than in my childhood, but considering the impacts of climate change I don't doubt the change.

It does, however, make me want to speed the plow a bit where my winter list is concerned.  The barn quilts are almost done (I'll post pics once I'm finished!), the raised beds are almost ready for spring planting, I do already have some nice lettuce in the ground and the carrots are all harvested.

We have a couple of landscape projects to start, which will entail removing even more lawn than we already have.  In this drought, I just can't tolerate putting fresh drinking water on a pleasure lawn, and so we may end up with a bigger patio area (which means more room to entertain and lounge outdoors!). Plus we'll be adding some nice, drought-tolerant landscape shrubs, to provide some pretty color. 

If we can make it through this list, I will feel a great sense of satisfaction as the days grow longer and warmer.

How are your winter projects coming?  

Hail the Mighty Buckthorn

I have posted in the past about our issues with light pollution, specifically from our neighbors' lights.  This weekend Big Ag and I were at the nursery, picking out some drought tolerant and freeze hardy plants to replace those we lost in the Big Freeze back in December when we stumbled upon some small versions of this attractive looking shrub/tree:

Meet the "John Edwards" Italian Buckthorn.  Drought and freeze hardy, loves well-drained soil with lots of calcium, and evergreen. Grows 2 - 3 feet per year, or more.

Meet the solution to our light issues.

We bought three of these to add to our backyard landscaping, and another four to plant along the south fence of our house, where our neighbors have six spotlights, which shine all night long.  We have a similar light-loving neighbor along the north side of our property, and will be planting a high hedge of 15 - 20 buckthorns there, to completely block the lights from that direction.  It will also give us a bit more privacy and block the unsightly view of his assorted cars and trailers.

We shopped a fence which would do the same thing, and the price came in at approximately $3500.  We're not willing to spend that much on something that will only decrease in beauty as it grows older. We can buy the Buckthorns and get them planted for about 10 percent the cost of the fence, and they will actually grow in beauty and majesty as they age. I love hedges, and finding a plant we can use for one that is also drought-tolerant is a boon for us.

I'm looking forward to a much greener view outside with these lovelies in view, and especially to a darker yard, which their thick foliage will help provide us.

Landscaping

Big Ag and I decided to spend this weekend working on the property, weeding and removing some zombie butterfly bushes.  Why "zombie" you say?  Well, because they weren't quite alive, but also not completely dead.  

They were also huge.  Which meant we needed to use his Jeep and his winch to pull the plants out.  

This was a win/win, because Big Ag loves to play around in his Jeep, and I love the times when that useless, several-hundred-pounds-of-decaying-yellow-metal hulk can do something useful, other than adorn our driveway with its persistent oil leak and rusting parts. 

I am talking about the Jeep right now, just to clarify that.  Big Ag does not leak oil (yet).

Anyway, I now have two empty holes in the ground, which means I can do some plant shopping.  This will not be edible landscape I'm looking for, but rather something that will benefit the wildlife in the area, specifically butterflies, bees and birds.  So one hole is going to get a cottonwood tree, and the other will get some kind of native, flowering plant or flowering small tree.  

I think it's important that, along with feeding ourselves, we also feed the winged creatures that rely on the nectar and protective covering that some types of landscape can provide.  It's important to share the land. So this is definitely a project that will be pleasurable to do, and I can't wait to see something green and growing in the space where the zombies once stood.

Coyote Brush

The lowly Coyote Brush is a bane to many gardeners and farmers in our area.  A scrubby plant which springs up in the morning and can quickly grow into an 8-foot tall, unattractive monster before dinnertime (OK, so I exaggerate), most people pull these plants out as soon as they crop up.  But I like them.  To me, they represent the quintessential drought-tolerant plant we should actually be using in our dry, mediterranean landscaping, and after a year's worth of watching them, I can tell you why.

First of all, you can give these plants NO water whatsoever if you choose, but if you provide just a small amount of water once a week or so, they will stay healthy and green throughout the year, without getting too woody or leggy.  When frost strikes and takes down your colorful (but temperamental) geraniums and bouganvilla, your coyote brush will still be green.  When everything in your yard looks a little burned and brown after a long, hot summer, there again is your faithful Coyote Brush, looking fresh as a rose after rain.

Coyote Brush can be shaped into whatever form pleases you.  The ones around my property are shaped into Christmas tree-like triangles, which keeps them neat and also allows me to control their height. But you could shape yours into a ring shape, a dog shape, or a Miley Cyrus twerking shape -- your choice.

But to me, the most important thing is the benefit these bushes provide to the local ecosystem.  They bloom late in the fall, when many plants have already gone dormant, and become a literal beehive of activity, as bees flock to the bushes each day.  In winter, they provide a thick covered space for birds of several species to find camouflage and safety.  And of course on the hottest summer days, they provide shade for all manner of birds and small animals.  They also appear to be gopher and deer proof -- always an advantage up here in the hills.

They do not take well to transplanting, unless they are quite small, so my recommendation is to watch your property and, when you see a seedling emerge, transplant it ASAP to a place where you want it to stay and grow.  I am planning on creating a hedge along our front yard, so that is where my plants will be going as I find them.

But most importantly, don't remove them entirely from your land.  They provide such a vital and necessary habitat to our native bees and birds that keeping a few around, just for that purpose alone is a good idea. And I think is also a good step towards being a good steward of the land you've been given, whether it's a suburban back yard or acreage.  The coyote brush deserves a place among whatever you are growing.

Finished!

This morning Big Ag and I went out to breakfast, then over to the landscape rock place to buy some fill gravel for our front yard project.  They dumped a couple of Bobcat loads into the back of the truck, and off we went towards home with the rear end of the truck hangin' low.

A few bucketfuls later, and we were finally there...at the end of the front yard remodel.  Here's a couple of pics:

We've come a long way from the huge, water-sucking lawn that was in place when we moved in....

Front Yard Progress

Every week we get a little bit farther on our front yard project....to a point where our neighbors now stop and tell us it's starting to look great.  This was a far cry from a couple of months or so ago when people drove by our house and thought the house was bank-owned because it all looked so unloved.  But killing a lawn without using herbicides takes dry weather and plenty of time.

So with that done, now real work can begin on it. Big Ag and Groceries did the hole digging for the plants (not easy in this part of the property, as the soil is quite rocky), and are currently putting in our log border on our pathway.  I did the design work, layed down all the landscape fabric and bark and also put in the drip system.

Probably the most satisfying thing for me has been running that drip system and noticing how much less water it uses than the lawn we inherited did.  When you pay for electricity to run your well pump, anything you can do to have that pump come on less is a good thing.  

So now we've got most of the bark, landscape fabric and plants in.

Bark is about 80 percent done

And we've moved on to making our pathway to the flagpole.  We'll be installing flagstones and gravel next week, finishing up on the bark laying, and then sitting back and enjoying watching it grow.

Starting the pathway border

OK, that was not honest. We will not be sitting back and watching it grow.  We will simply move on to the 9,999 other projects around here that need doing.

Anything else might get boring!

To Weed Block Or Not To Weed Block...Hmmm

A Weedy Dilemma

So this morning I installed weed block in our front yard, before laying down some bark and finishing the lawn removal project we started last fall.  And just to be sure I was doing it right, I checked a few internet sites, only to find out there is a massive backlash against the use of landscape weed block, from gardeners everywhere...which leads to the dilemma:  Do I weed block or not?  Basically the arguments against it go as follows:

Weed block is ultimately unnecessary, because the mulch or bark you spread over your yard will 1) deter weeds all by themselves, and 2) break down and enrich the soil as it decomposes. But if you put weed block in place before laying your mulch or bark down, when the bark breaks down it will not become part of the soil -- it will just sit on top of it, uselessly. There's also the little issue of landscape fabric being non-recyclable, with some being made of plastic compounds.

Those are convincing arguments.

Nonetheless, I still weed blocked the front yard anyway, using non-plastic weed block.  Why?  First of all, because enriching the soil around the yard is not something I am interested in.  If I had spreading groundcovers, or planned on a more busy garden, adding plants as the years went on, I would leave the weed block out of the mix and just bark over the yard, since good soil would be something I needed in the future.  

The mostly-native plants that are growing out there will be receiving natural compost and of course water, but most of the yard is being left fallow, intentionally, because we want to use very little irrigation on anything not producing anything edible.  All these plants we put in do well on very little water and poor soil, so they are well-adapted to what's there now.  

The other thing is that while weeds ARE deterred by a thick layer of mulch, many of the native weeds we have here put down deep tap roots and, once in, are almost impossible to yank out.  A layer of weed block assures that, if those weeds do start to grow, they will not be able to get under the fabric layer and will therefore be easier to remove.

I also wonder how many people don't use the weed block and then end up using copious amounts of Round-Up instead of old-fashioned weeding.  I am a realist, and know I will be concentrating more on our food crops than our front yard, so I want to make sure I have to do as little weeding as possible, because I absolutely hate using Round-Up and avoid it at all times....even though it has low mammalian toxicity, it is still extremely hazardous to creatures like toads and frogs, both of which reside on our property in abundance. So thanks, but no thanks.  

So often things seem to come down to using what we consider to be the lesser of two evils.  I'm not in love with weed-block, but if it prevents Star Thistle from settling in as permanent yard-scape plants, as well as allows me to pull weeds easily instead of resorting to chemical warfare, then I'm willing to bite the bullet and use it.  

That being said, I am getting extremely excited as we approach the end of this lawn-killing endeavor.  The front yard has looked so bad for so long, to see bark and green, growing shrubs will be much easier on the eyes than how it's looked recently.  I'm sure our neighbors will agree.

Food Not Lawns

One of the first things we did when we moved here was to take out the water-sucking front lawn.  Out here in the country, running any water means using a precious (and dwindling) resource, and also running your well, which costs you money.  So you'd better love what you're watering, because you're paying for it. 

Since the huge front lawn not only wasn't giving us anything back in terms of food, but also requiring water PLUS going out when it's 90 degrees to mow and edge, we decided the big front lawn had to go. So we stopped watering it.

We are planting shrubs. These are not giant gopher holes.  

So here we are now, in January, with the lawn good and dead, and we have begun to fill in the former lawn space with some lovely, drought-tolerant plants, shrubs and trees.  We have lots of rosemary and lavender, and also some Torch Flowers, Gold Coin, Santolina (medicinal in addition to being a lovely landscape plant), ceanothus, a China Berry tree, and some other native stuff.  

We bought all these at the local nursery.

So we're at that same nursery this last weekend, buying vines and talking to the lady there about our neighborhood, which she's quite familiar with.  We're discussing the house that's kitty-corner from us, which was foreclosed on and where everything, trees included, died when the bank stopped watering.  Call it another casualty of the Great Recession.

But then the lady (who obviously doesn't know which house is ours) quips, "And what about the house across the street from the foreclosure?  Those people have totally killed their lawn!  I don't believe it!  Why would anyone do THAT?"

Ahem. Yes, I'm sure you guessed it.  We are "those people."

I relayed this to her and she pretty much died of embarrassment right on the spot.  But it does lead one to wonder:  Are people still so behind the curve they believe watering a half-acre of turf is somehow a wise thing to do, in an area where the water table is dropping?   

While it is hard to be considered "those people," conservationists have to be willing to stick to their guns and realize they may be out in the lead in terms of forward thinking, and that some people still haven't understood the reasons behind conservation of water and other resources, and the urgency of getting on with it. 

Like the old saying goes:  When you're two steps ahead of the crowd, they'll call you a crackpot.  When you're one step ahead of the crowd, they'll call you a genius.

Signed, 
The Neighborhood Crackpots.