Yard and Garden - early May, 2002

This is always a "work in progress" that changes from time to time, from year to year. For the last year, Harry has been doing a massive soil improvement project (compost, compost, compost!) and we are seeing the results. Digging down in most places, we now have wonderful, rich soil instead of our usual horrible sticky gumbo. And now we have worms galore!

In the back garden, we have corn, tomatoes, carrots, onions, basil, borage, cilantro, parsley, yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers, lettuce, beets, green beans, watermelons.

We grew our greens in the front yard because when we planted them, Harry had not yet made the raised beds for our garden. Now that summer is coming on, the greens are about to play out. But for months, we have eaten greens every day...collards, kale, Swiss chard, mustard greens, cabbage.

The garden is in the background. See the tall corn at the back!

Here Harry has built and put up a tall trellis for the cucumber vines to climb.

This bed is to the right of the garden and the stone walkway. We had red-tip hedges along the back fence but they all died. Harry is going to make raised beds all along the fence, where we will plant pineapple guava. It will give good privacy, plus  provide fruit for the birds.

... a closeup of borage. We just heard about this wonderful plant a few months ago. It has gorgeous little blooms that the bees adore. You can freeze them in ice cubes for colorful pizzazz. You can eat the small leaves in salad. They have a slight cucumber flavor and are good for the digestion.

Some Zinnias in the front flower bed.

This is looking from the driveway. Most of what you see in bloom here are Cosmos and Zinnias. (To the left of this is where we have our patch of greens.)

This is a tithonia - Mexican sunflower. This is our first year for this bushy plant that's about 1-1/2 feet tall.. It's supposed to bloom for months on end.

Honeysuckle - on a trellis at the side of the house.

We have an irregularly shaped border of Asian jasmine around three sides of the front yard. It's a wonderful ground cover that requires little water after it is established.

This is our "ornamental sorghum." A bird must have dropped the seed there last year. Harry jokes that we will have to hire a thresher to come for the harvest.

Beautiful verbena grows all around the base of the water oak tree.

This is our view as we sit in our office and work at our computers.

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