{Yard Tour}

Remember how I used to take you on flowerbed tours in Dallas? Well, here's the first installment of one here in California. The yard and flower beds needed some love, but it's coming together really well! After lots of weeding, cleaning, cutting back, edging, pruning, and watering, we've made some great progress!

I was thrilled when we moved here and I could have a yard and garden to work in again! When I told our landlord that I had great plans for the yard he said to feel free to buy plants and whatever else to spruce up the yard and to give the receipts to him and he'd take care of the costs! How happy is that?

Let's start in the backyard, shall we?

See that gigantic rosebush? Well, it was monstrous and trying to take over the whole world. After talking with a few people and buying a pair of pruners we cut that bad boy back, gave it a nice little trim and some direction and stability in life. And now it is blooming like crazy! Write a sunday school lesson about that, why dontcha. 

See all that green at the base of the rosebush? That's mint. And it smells delicious. And it tastes delicious. We've also got some geraniums, lions tail (new), and some flowering vines of some sort (new).  Where the lions tail is used to be a sad sort of palm tree. We put that thing out of it's misery and I'm very pleased with the results!

Seriously, though, this rosebush is gorgeous.

Down this side of the house we've got some Canna lilies, a jasmine vine, and some other stuff that I don't know the names of.

 Along the back we cleared out all sorts of stuff including another sad palm tree and instead put in a honeysuckle bush and a rose bush and there' a white bird of paradise still sitting in the pot waiting for me to grab a shovel.

This is a blackberry bush! When we moved in it was massive and overtaking the lawn. Seriously there were thorny vines halfway across the lawn. My stud of a husband put on his leather gloves and took care of it. Cut that sucker back and gave it a trellis to climb one (another sunday school lesson).

Do you like our logs? There was a whole stack of them in our backyard when we moved in. We pulled out a couple of them that would work well as stools and chopped up the rest for firewood. We've used those stools more than once! 

And on the other side of the house - our fruit trees!

Pomelo - Citrus maxima, is a crisp citrus fruit native to South and Southeast Asia. It is usually pale green to yellow when ripe, with sweet white flesh and very thick albedo.

Yuzu - The yuzu is a citrus fruit and plant originating in East Asia. It is believed to be a hybrid of sour mandarin and Ichang papeda.

Pineapple Guava/Guavasteen/feijoa - It has a sweet, aromatic flavor, which tastes like pineapple,apple and mint.

Not my favorite, but Miriam and Evette love them!

Oranges!! 

And lemons!!

It's like a little garden of eden over there!

We also have this massively tall palm tree. 

  

And our newest installment into our backyard! Thank you craigslist! The girls love it! It's pretty sweet - it's really easy to take apart and snap together and you can do many different configurations. 

  

Along the side of the house we'll planning on putting a veggie garden. After wintertime we'll plan and execute that. I'm excited!

We got a baby swing for Miriam off of craigslist recently too and Evette was upset that she was too big for it so we found her the the disc swing and she LOVES it! I feel like we should film a little tikes commercial in our backyard 

For the front - 

I cleaned out these flower beds (which is an ongoing process) and planted a variety of iris and sage and a few more rose bushes.

There were some rose bushes in the front when we moved in that needed some pruning and so.....fill in the blank, make sunday school analogy, and look at the fresh red growths coming in. Hopefully we'll be able to shape these bushes and get them nice and healthy.

  

Also this gardenia bush which smells like heaven. Yes, this is what heaven smells like. 

 We have a jade tree in the yard, too! Pretty cool.

In the front of the house we cleared out a section of the yard and turned it into a flower bed for the ferns that we bought and had in pots in the apartment. They look nice and help give balance to the front of the house. 

With the recent rain that we've gotten within the last couple weeks the yard has exploded with clover! I love it. They have overtaken the bed  and the nice rock border I built for it, but I like it. It's very Ireland-esque - that and I'm just thrilled to have something growing in our front yard.

Our front yard was so sad with the drought but it has just exploded nearly overnight with the rain. We've got clover and all sorts of baby grass growth. Green is good.

So that's where we're at! It feels good to have dirt under my fingernails again.