Finished!!!

On Saturday morning, between driving kids to and from birthday parties, Courtland and I stopped at the nursery and I got several plants. I got several smaller Xanadu Phyladendron, Giant Blue Lily Turf, Yesterday Today and Tomorrow, and one larger Nuccio’s Gem Camellia (which will have white flowers). I know that the Philadendron and the Lily Turf will do well, since we have several more of those growing around our yard already.  And I’m crossing my fingers that the Yesterday Today and Tomorrow plants do well — I saw one growing in Balboa Park and it was so pretty because the one plant had dark purple, light purple, and white flowers all over it. I asked at the nursery, and they said this plant blooms in dark purple, then the flowers change to light purple, then to white. So I hope those ones bloom (although they have nice looking leaves, so they’ll be good either way). 

We had a few small plants growing in the planting area under the three trees along our back lawn, but they were mostly annuals. So we haven’t had plants there under those trees for a while. The only problem is the Berkley and Coco will go out in the yard every day and run laps around the yard. It’s really cool to watch Great Danes when they’re running fast — they’re such beautiful, graceful animals when they really get going. But they also just run up and over anything in their path. So they would run through the planting area under those trees, and make a tight turn right at the end of the planter to continue their lap around the yard. That meant that every time they ran, it threw dirt and wood chips all over the place — especially at that spot where they turned, spraying wood chips about 6 feet across the lawn. We’d usually just sweep up the wood chips, but their constant running in that area also eventually resulted in their feet getting caught on the drip system and pulling out all the drip lines. A couple months ago we went out an spent a whole hot Saturday morning digging ditches and burying the drip lines so they weren’t near the surface.  I thought that would fix the problem. But eventually they caught one of the little drip lines again and the entire job was undone — the whole length of the line was pulled up again. 

So I decided the best way to fix the problem was to plant some plants that would eventually get larger and fill in that area under the trees, and to put up a bunch of string all throughout that planting area to prevent them from running through there at all while the plants are growing in. 

It turned out to be a big job. A lot bigger than I thought, because of the rocky dirt which made the digging take forever. Kolby’s been working to earn some money, so he worked hard and helped dig a lot of the ditches to re-bury the lines and the wholes for the plants. Michael also helped on Saturday to put up all those strings — which has worked perfectly!  It’s been great this week to watch them run up and down the turf instead of making a mess in the planter. And I just finished planting today. It took a while, but I think it turned out great. And it’ll really be nice once the plants get bigger. 

Before: with wood chips all over the lawn

After: all planted!