Weekends Plantings

This past weekend, in addition to the Mother's Day festivities, we were able to make it to the nursery to start on the back planting bed.  One of these days I'm going to make an actual diagram of the yard, because I'm finding we tend to jump around all over the place.  It goes hand in hand with my having the attention span of a gnat.

Anyway, we first started with some Cuphea Llavea 'Flamenco Samba'.

Hmmm.  Too much sun.  This was the flower a few posts ago whose name I couldn't remember.  We have had this plant at our last home and it was gorgeous.  It does have a tendency to get a bit leggy, but can easily be trimmed back in the winter and bounces right back again the following spring.  It will get about two to three feet in all directions.

Next up is Helichrysu Petiolare 'Limelight'.

This is one of my wife's favorites.  We also had it at our home in Huntington Beach before moving.  It was mixed in with the Flamenco Samba and looked quite stunning.  This one does creep and the foliage will start to gray in the the center.  We found keeping it constantly trimmed and removing the gray matter regularly kept it looking tip top.

This is how the initial set up is.

We currently have seven of the Flamenco Samba's and three of the Limelights.  Some of the Samba's are a little small.  We bought five of them a few weeks back and they were ravaged by the dog we were dogsitting.  They're fighting back, though.  The dog is gone, so we felt safe adding more.  I don't mean gone as in with his maker, I mean back with his owners.  The hope is to create a meandering line of the Samba's with the limelights in between.  In the back (to the right of thg bottom picture) we're going to squeeze in items with height, as we would like to enclose the garden in some. 

Blooming Onions!!!!

We have blooming onions!!  Ok, they're not chopped and deep fried, but they're on their way.

It's not much, but it's the first thing we've ever grown from seed.  And, I'm really hoping it's an actual onion and not a blade of grass my wife propped up as a cruel joke.  At this point, it's 50/50 either way.

There is a second one, though.

You really have to squint for that one.  And imagine.  Imagining helps.  A lot.

These are the yellow onions we planted about a week ago.  I think it was a week.  Again, a journal would come in handy.  Then, actually writing things in it would need to follow.  Don't hold your breath.

Lastly, Happy Mother's Day to all the mom's out there.  We'll be having a fun filled day wine tasting in the Temecula Valley, which is our local wine region.  Only fifty miles away, so if we ever become hundred milers, we at least have the wine covered.

May I Introduce......Lawn

Finally, it's completed.  The backyard no longer looks like the vacant lot of a crack house.  Now, it looks like the well groomed lot of a....  Anyway, we put in Fescue, and it seems to be doing well, at least in the hours it's actually been around.

Now, on to bigger and better things.

GLORY!!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Tottenham Hotspur 1, Manchester City 0.  Fourth place is ours!!!!!!!!!!  Win on Sunday, plus an Arsenal loss gets us third!!!!  No matter!!!!!!  Glorious day!!!!!!!  More gardening tomorrow!!!!!!  Just football today!!!!!!!

Plants, What a Concept!!

Ok, not exactly plants, but an attempt!!  This weekend while buying PVC pipe for the new sprinklers, I saw that daylillies were on sale for a buck!!  So, I bought a couple.

El Desperado and Siloam Ury Winniford.  We got them into pots right away, considering I think we've missed the California planting window.  Now, the package said to plant them "point side up".  There was no point side.  There was a disc and some tentacles that resembled the hair of Predator.  I planted hair side down, although in retrospect, I probably should have planted one in each direction just to be safe.  Although, I wouldn't have written down which end was up, so I would have been at a loss anyway.

The daylillies are the three smaller pots on the left.  The larger pot on the right consists of an unknown amount of onions.

I say unknown, because my son helped me plant them.  There are three rows of them, and we plan on thinning them should they actually sprout.  This is our first attempt at seeds and, I must be honest, the seeds looked like sand.  My son's first reaction was "seriously?  Those look nothing like onions."  I couldn't disagree.  But, when I showed him the onion rings on the package, he couldn't plant them fast enough.

In the meantime, we have the compost down for the lawn.  I would have taken pictures, but it's now dark and the India Pale Ale requires me to not get out of my chair.  I should be able to take picture tomorrow during the day, because...

...the most important game of the season.  Tottenham Hotspur vs. Manchester City from Manchester.  A win and we capture fourth (combined with an Arsenal loss and a win on Sunday and we get third!!  Lasagana revenged!!!  Look it up.)  A draw is fantastic, as we will remain in fourth.  A loss, and it becomes 98% we get fifth.  Not good.  Let me explain for the Americans:

The top four teams in the Premier League qualify for the Champion's League.  This is equivalent to the NCAA basketball tournament where all the Champions from all the leagues of Europe (and every country has one) play in a months' long tournament next year.  If we finish fifth, we qualify for the Europa league, which is the equivalent of the NIT tournament.  Do you know who won the NIT tournament?  I didn't think so.  Needless to say, the money is monumentally different between the two tournaments.

Therefore, I am taking a half day tomorrow from work, so I can be home by noon PDT to watch the game on ESPN2.  I expect ALL of you to do the same.  Ok, both of you.  Also, it's Cinco de Mayo, and my lovely wife gets to celebrate her Mexican heritage.  I get to drink Pacifico and watch the English Premier League.  Win-win in my book.

Back Lawn Update

So far, so good in the back.  Here's some of the progress:

Here is some of the trenching for the additional sprinkler heads required.  The zones for the previous lawn were broken into two halves.  We removed one half when we added the play set, which is shown below.  Unfortunately, that left about a quarter of the remaining lawn without water, so we need to add three heads to one side.

Here's my son helping out.

Below is where we're currently at.  We need to drop a couple of inches of compost and till it in, then we'll be ready for the sod.

Complaint: Fish Emulsion

Honestly, it 's one of two fertilizer's I use, does it need to smell for a month????????

I'm not complaining about the brand.  It's fantastic, as the plants (even the ever increasingly irritating me Brush  Cherry's) are responding in spectacular fashion.  Does it need to smell more than two days after I use it?  And, yes, I follow the instructions and I'm sober 78% of the time I use it.  I'm just asking.  If the answer is yes, then I'll shut up.