Subtle Changes

Although our yard does not look much different to the casual observer, some small changes have taken place as we went about "cleaning up" our landscaping.

In the front, that just meant cleaning out weeds around the mailbox, pulling a few weeds from the main garden by the house, ripping out a patch of pretty-purpled-flowered-but-still-weeds vegetation from the center of the yard, and trimming the front bushes away from the sidewalk a bit. That whole venture filled less than a full contractor's garbage bag of yard waste.

The back yard was a bit more work.  My little corner garden is under our neighbors' camphor trees both to the north and to the east, so Rick blew out a huge bag full of leaves and sticks from that garden alone.  I am glad that we put down the heavier red river rock in our gardens because we can blow off the leaves and not scatter the rock.  From that garden I removed two nearly-dead bushes, and I trimmed back two tall Ti plants.  The great thing about Ti plants is that if you trim them back, they will send out new stems and grow.  I had cut down one last year, and it is about a foot tall already. You can just see the red leaves peeking out above the front plants in the picture below.

While the gardenia tree does well, I had to remove
the bushes in both front corners and cut down the
overgrown Ti plants in the back.

My back gardenia tree needed some trimming away from the fence, but it looks full and good this year, and it has been rewarding us with gardenia blossoms since we arrived.

I have little left of the center lemon-lime plants,
but they should grow back out with new shoots
and green-and-yellow foliage.

The garden in front of the Florida room windows needed some drastic measures.  I had planted lemon-lime plants, and they had all grown tall which meant that all of the foliage was at the top with just spindly stems underneath.  Since the lemon-lime are the same type of plant as the Ti plant, they too can be cut back and allowed to grow new stems.  Right now, they look a little sick, but I have hopes that they will reward me with new shoots in a couple of weeks. (If I remember to water them!)

The bougainvillea towers above my head as
it fills in the gaps on either side of the tree where
we had to stop the back yard fence.

The bougainvillea that I planted around the back tree a couple of years ago is doing well.  (It must have liked the hurricane!)  I had to cut back some of the taller  branches and cut off one branch that was invading my neighbor's yard, but the rest looks healthy and good.  I tied one branch back onto the trellis and was rewarded for my efforts by driving one of the many bougainvillea thorns into the flesh of my right thumb.  Wow! Those things really hurt.

I really should not complain since the thorns are one of the reasons I chose the bougainvillea.  A former neighbor had a nasty little dog that was always trying to come into our yard, so by putting up a trellis and planting the thorny plant, I have successfully stopped any creature larger than a snake from entering our yard through the gap in our back fence.  Right now we see green leaves, but I see small signs that the bougainvillea soon will have red brachts to make it festive for the holidays.

Work needs to be done to form a garden around the
arika palm in the back corner.  The palm itself
was protected from Hurricane Irma's winds and
did very well.

The arika  palm that we planted in the back corner of the yard survived the hurricane well also; however, once again I raked out an entire huge bag of leaves and debris from under it.  We want to add edger pavers around that palm and to put down landscape fabric with stone on top, but the edgers that we have elsewhere in the back yard are discontinued.  Sigh.  Why is it that if one finds stones... or shampoo... or a particular food... that one likes, the manufacturer just HAS to go about either changing ("improving") or discontinuing it?  Now we have to hunt for another type of edger that will complement the gardens we already have set in place in the back yard. The fun never ends.

We would like to add some weed and feed fertilizer to our front yard, but we are just getting into the dry season here, so we don't know if now is the right time to do so.  I also need to add some plants to the back corner garden under the gardenia tree, and we would like to add some vegetation on the south side of the house, too.  We'll do that both for color and to keep our landscape people from chipping all of the paint off the bottom of the house with their weed-wackers.

The gardens and yard will be our main focus this year now that the interior of the house is complete.  This transformation will not take place all in one year, both because Rick's hand is still healing and because landscaping can be very expensive.  As I figure out what I want to put back there and what we can afford, we will start to make Gladys beautiful again.