Working on the Back Yard - Part 3 of X

It's been quite some time since the last house notes, and since we're just hanging at home right now, with me tapering down for the upcoming O.C. Marathon (trying not to catch a head cold or eat anything that will make me poo funny), there's not a huge amount of things to blog about.  Time for a back yard update!  As you may recall from the blog late last year, Chris got to operate semi-heavy machinery, and we went completely against late President Reagan's instructions and built a wall.

As I mentioned in that blog linked above, we made a trip to a local nursery (which was both highly recommended from folks we've met around here AND from which we'd recently received a coupon - bonus!) and picked up several dwarf cherry laurel trees to plant along the back wall as well as several pots of bamboo for the eastern fence line.  As we spaced them out upon delivery, we realized we'd need a few more, so it was back to the nursery for reinforcements.

Over the course of a week or so in late October of last year, we got everyone in the ground:

All of the dwarf laurels, finally planted!

In case anyone needs the
specific, tree-related details.

They really are lovely trees - 

they smell nice but don't give off too much scent,

and while they drop little berries,

there's not much mess.

Plus!  Bees and butterflies and birds love them.

A short of the southeast corner of our yard...

there are the laurels along the back

and the bamboo along the eastern fence.

As you can see from the photo above, we also planted the bamboo during this time.  When we discussed our plans with Dad, he gave us the great piece of information of ensuring we purchased clumping bamboo as opposed to running bamboo; apparently, clumping bamboo will spread out laterally somewhat (2-3 feet in each direction, eventually), but running bamboo does just that - sends out feelers in all directions for feet upon feet, and it's hard to contain (he related a story where he found bamboo shoots from a plant he had about 8 feet away from the plant itself...on the other side of a sidewalk.  Pass, please).  Our nursery didn't have enough bamboo plants of just one species (do you use species for plants, like you would for animals?  Maybe) for our needs, so we decided to alternate plantings between the options shown below:

Kimmei and giant!

They actually have slightly different colors,

so it's kind of cool to see them alternated along the fence.

At the nursery, we also picked up one lemon and one lime tree (one of each - they had some trees that made like four different kinds of citrus, but we declined to acquire these unholy abominations of certain genetic disaster), and we put those near the southwestern corner of the yard, between the laurels and the garden:

There they are,

to the left of the shot.

In late November, after we fully recovered from Ragnar Los Coyotes (physically - I may never fully emotionally recover from hiking that fire road), it was back into the yard to start working on building a retaining wall to visually separate the cherry laurels from the rest of the space.  We picked up some timbers from the HD (truthfully, most of the delay during this time was due to Chris being firmly convinced that we could find timbers of other colors and being routinely disappointed to find that this wasn't so) and set to leveling off the ground.

Because it isn't proper yard work

if you don't have your level AND tape measure.

Using the new shovel to level ground.

Who broke the old shovel, you ask?

Me, of course.

Also, don't wear flip flops if you're digging;

I am certainly not a paragon of safety,

as you all should know by now.

After getting the ground level and the timbers set, we drilled holes through the wood and anchored the timbers to the ground by hammering rebar through the holes.  Due to the height distance in this part of the yard, we ended up with two levels of timbers, which required more rebar than we originally thought (add that to the list of things I never knew I'd buy at HD - actual rebar pieces.  It's like we really build things around here or something).

Level one: done!

Hammering on level two.

Look at me, still in flip flops.

It's a goddamn wonder I still have all my toes.

At least I'm wearing safety glasses here.

Seriously, I need this t-shirt.

Although we're pretty much keeping our front yard the same, I did swap out a few of the sadder looking succulents for herbs, last October as well:

The main part of the front yard -

no changes here.

Those wee three little green blurbs

in the front row on the left

are now basil plants.

Cilantro planted in a pot on the doorstep.

It seems to do pretty well with

a bit of morning sun but mostly afternoon shade.

The doorstep faces north, so this should work.

Okay, I think that's all the scintillation my dear blog readers can handle for now, so more yard updates to come in the future!  

Later!

Amy