When you get married, you each bring certain items with you. One of the things my husband brought was this bench. It was old and worn even then. Somewhere in our second year of marriage I repainted the metal ends and did a slight sanding to the slats, but it still looked pretty similar….
When I told my neighbors I was planting thousands of flowers in my small front yard, they looked at me in disbelief. Most people put in a few flowering perennials here and consider their yard done–if they have any flowers at all. Annuals are rare here, and bulbs are almost complete strangers in our rock-landscaped…
A sneak peek at the white garden It’s time for another garden tour! Would you like to come see my garden in Las Vegas in person? It will be warm, so wear sunscreen and a hat, bring some water, and of course bring something to take notes with if you’d like. You may bring your camera if…
The heat has been intense; it was 118º for over 10 days right after the garden was planted. After that it cooled to 110º. Several plants are dealing with sunscald, and several roses are dead (as well as a few euyonomous bushes). The others are struggling. I hesitate to replace anything yet because it will…
Neighbors I’ve never met before are starting to talk to me. “Stunning!” one man said to my husband and I last week as he came down the street to get his mail. “It’s really beautiful!” said another man. A woman stopped her car in the middle of the road, rolled down her window, and yelled out that…
Before we started We are making progress on the front yard. We waited a long time for the HOA to approve everything, and once they did, we got started right away. So far it’s been a lot of moving dirt. The tree and bushes were chopped up and taken to the dump in…
My nasturtiums are growing really well right now. I have to be careful that they don’t overtake my herb garden and crowd the other plants from the sun (which they did last year, killing several plants). Both the leaves and the flowers of these plants are edible. They’ve got a bite to them, though (like…
White flower carpet rose I have been dreaming of relandscaping our front yard for many years. We have the typical Las Vegas front yard: a strange shape of grass, surrounded by rocks, a few bushes and a single tree. (Newer homes are not allowed to put grass in the front yard anymore, per a law…
My garden has been full of blossoms the last couple of weeks. The grass has really greened up thanks to the top dressing of 18 bags of manure. We have been harvesting from this raised bed every other day; I have lettuce, radishes, spinach and bok choy at this end of the bed, and asparagus…
The garden yesterday evening right after sunset I cut some of the first daffodils from the garden. With limited cuttings, they will still give me many in the garden, both this year and in years to come. They smell so wonderful! I harvested rosemary, parsley, thyme, green onions, and Swiss chard from the garden. We celebrated…
The temperatures have been in the 50’s and 60’s during the day, and in the 30’s and 40’s at night for the last month. (Temperatures are in Fahrenheit, for my non-U.S. readers). My Dorsett Golden Apple is leafing out. It’s the first one to do so each spring (it ripens in summer). Those are flower…
The photo above is one I took two years ago. I was experimenting to see what, if any, difference it made having the jars over my seedlings. I knew the jars kept the bugs and birds from eating them, but I wanted to see if leaving them on for longer made much difference. …