Summer Garden

My spring garden turned out rather disappointing- heavy rains and a lack of gutters colluded to drown many of my seedlings. Then, last two weeks of 90-degree temperatures finished off the survivors. Such is the life of a SoCal gardener- the average is 70 degrees but we seem to just swing through the extremes, rarely sitting at "average".

So I threw up my hands and started my summer garden. It's been 90 after all, right?  I had given an earlier start to my zucchini plants in the hope that they'd establish and bear fruit before being overwhelmed by the tomato plants like last year. The plan appears to be working- I already have one little zucchini. There are currently three plants- I'll see how crazy that is I guess. I also started snow peas earlier, and after a very slow start, they appear to be on their way to productivity. We had our first tasty, small batch this weekend.

For the rest of the garden, I put in the following this weekend:

The peas & zucchini have a good start.
Debris is from work on the front yard. 

3 kinds of tomatoes:
- Sweet 100 (Returning this year after a spectacular crop last year)
- Hillbilly (Jon wanted an heirloom variety- this seemed appropriate)
- Pantano Romanesco Italian Heirlom

3 varieties of peppers:
- Golden Bell
- Purple Beauty
-Giallo di Cuneo

And the following:
- Kentucky Wonder string beans
- Little Leaf pickling cucumbers
- Little Finger Carrots
- Tatsoi (spring garden)
- Golden beats
- Pak Choi & Gailan

Updates to come. For the moment, the garden is enjoying rain and 49 degree temperatures. So much for summer...

Yard Begone!

We've been working to get our yard landscaped and renovated for about a year now.  As with all home projects, its taken way longer than I would have thought. But we're on our way- at least with the front yard!

Until now, we've been "that house" on the block- the one that clearly needs some love and care.We've done a lot of great things on the inside, which frankly is where we spend much of our time. Sadly, that left the outside mostly neglected except my veggie garden and an occasional clean up from the neighborhood gardener. The first step was to install and paint fences, which we did last summer.  We also got a landscape plan made, but when all was done,  Fall had come and we decided to wait.

While winter has tried to keep its clutches on us this year, it is technically spring and we decided to get the front yard tackled. Our gardener has the plans in hand and he's been working in between the rain squalls to get the job done. The plan for the front includes ripping out all the grass and replacing it with wood-chips and drought tolerant, native plants.  The move towards low-water, native landscaping is slowly taking hold in LA, and is especially working its way through Altadena. After living in Flagstaff for a summer, I know beautiful, environmentally-friendly landscaping is possible, and I'm thrilled we're making it happen in our own smidge of land.  So far, the grass and the awful brink-lined flower beds are gone. Irrigation is coming next week. I'll post more pictures when we get the plants and ground cover it.

Building fences

We've been working to fix up a lot of the interior of the house over the past year, and with the warmer weather arriving our thoughts turned to our yard. We've had a lot of people over the past year tell us that the inside of the house is a lot nicer than they expected from the outside, and we're hoping to change that. Before we started planting beautiful plants, we knew we had to do something about our fence. We had a wrought iron fence around both the back and front yard was pretty dated; the white paint on it was rusted through and looking pretty shabby.



In the front yard, we would have loved to get rid of the fence, but with all the foot traffic we get on our corner, it didn't seem practical. We decided to paint the wrought iron fence a red-brown that complements the house color. We're really pleased with the results- although it felt like it took us *forever* to get the job done and some help to get it all done. The picture above shows the old, drab white fence next to a section we finished. Lesson learned this project: when a paint product advertises "phenomenal adhesion", its probably a good idea to get it on your skin. Hopefully the paint job will last much longer than the rash...

In the back, a kluged together set of wood, wrought iron fences, as well as shrubs, were used to create a barrier and privacy. Time had not treated any of it well. The shrubs had been hacked to nearly the roots before we moved in, so we had no privacy. Rather than salvage the fence, we decided to put a new, beautiful wooden one. Our good friend Andy came down from Portland to install it for us. Its soooo beautiful!!! And it went up so quickly! We couldn't be more thrilled. We still need to stain it and treat it, which is a big job, but we're already enjoying our new, private backyard. We also now have a new drive way to park our car off the road. We keep the (broken) automatic fence from the old wrought iron fence to give us a little security.

Next step is to get the plans from our landscape designers and get started on the irrigation, hard-scaping, and then planting. It'll be a big job but so worth it!

We have a bunch of pictures posted here. Here's some of my favorites:


Upper Right: Demolition of the old fence
Upper Left: The finished fence
Lower Right: Andy and Jon thinking hard on how to get the fence to work out.
Lower Left: The beautiful gate Andy