NO LONGER PINK.

Before:

After:



The color is "Buttered Yam." You want bold? We got your bold right here.

Programming note: in the bottom right corner of this last picture you can see where we've dug out what will be a French drain. All that rain from the roof has to go somewhere.

Miscellany

Roses in the front.

Crepe myrtle doing well.



We got a bottlebrush to fill a hole in the back corner, and it's thriving. That border you see around the bottlebrush is made of concrete blocks left over from the front walkway. You can also see the border in front of the cypresses; that's made of flagstone salvaged from the old patio.

We got this arbor on sale; it will eventually go at the entrance to the backyard and we'll plant it with bougainvilla.

Parkway

This is one of the last big projects we tackled in the front. We dug out a huge amount of old ice plant. And we added a railroad-tie border to make things look nicer.

Front Bed Update

Growing in nicely. It will still be two or three years at least before they completely grow in and become the big hedge we planned, but they're getting there.

The cacti are doing well, too. We actually had to remove a prickly pear because it was growing too big and taking over everything. (Probably a bad choice to plant a prickly pear in the first place, seeing as they can get bigger than SUVs.)

Backyard Fountain

Finally going. 

It's a powerful pump; nice waterfall sound. 

 

So the orange patch is the color we've pretty much decided on for the whole house. "Buttered Yam."

Weed Blocking Fabric

Is basically useless unless you put down two layers. Lesson learned.

Planting and more planting

The beds in the front are all planted.

The smaller bed has all California native plants.

The larger bed has a mixture of native and non-native plants. They don't look like much now, but all were selected because they are shrubs -- they'll eventually get 6, 8, 10 feet high, forming a nice natural fence/screen.

That tree against the house is a purple-leaf plum; we just put it in.