Backyard Garden

We finally put in our backyard garden:

Each plant lives in a unique Tupperware container, and has been tied-in to the shower’s water line to make watering super easy.

Broccoli

Peppers

Spinach

Strawberries

Tomatoes

These photos are actually a few weeks old. We have already harvested the first crop, and nothing tastes better than home-grown from your own organic garden.

Backyard Update

June 29, 2008- the backyard looked like this:

November 23, 2008- roughly 5 months later:

December 13, 2007- the north side:

November 23, 2008- roughly 11 months later:

We have finished edging the lawn around the house, and removed the palm from the north side (by the air conditioner). By now you should be able to visualize the brick path that will follow all the way around the house. The north side planting beds are waiting for the new air conditioner; the west side is going to hold an organic garden.

In the corner we have planted a navel orange tree. We should have fruit this time next year, plus, it fills in the corner nicely.

As you can see, the persian shield didn’t do very well over by the bottle palm, so we moved it here, along with some ground cover. Hopefully the corner will fill in between now and Spring.

Update: Florida Room & Backyard

Before we bought this house, the Florida Room looked like this:

Today it looks like this:

We removed the ugly crossbars, replaced the screens and screen door…

…we even installed a doggie door. After replacing a few key pieces of the frame, and some fresh paint, the exterior wall looks good as new.

Behind the pool we’ve planted a Traveler’s Palm. As you can see, its still suffering from a combination of transplant shock, and Hurricane season.

Assuming it survives and flourishes, one day it should look like this:

Back in September 2007, the backyard looked like this:

Today, it looks like this:

We’ve installed a gate to our neighbor’s house, and started edging the lawn. Eventually there will be a brick path winding its way around the entire house.

As you can see, the lawn has grown back, thanks to a very rainy few weeks.

Irrigation 101

This is our irrigation pump. It is approximately 300 years old, and still in surprisingly good condition.

In theory, installing a new sprinkler system is easy work. The pump draws water up from the ground, and then sends it along a PVC pipe to wherever it is you want it to go. As a lifelong fan of LEGO, I found designing PVC systems to be fairly easy and fun.

Indeed, setting up the PVC piping is rather easy. The hard part is getting those easily-assembled pipes 24-36 inches into the good earth.

After digging the various trenches to install the irrigation system, our lawn has been left in a disastrous state.

This patch of lawn has been missing for quite a while.

This is the front lawn on one of its “good days”. The soil is extremely sandy, so once a small patch of lawn is removed to make room for irrigation pipe, desrtification quickly sets in and the dead spots grow quickly.

You might be thinking to yourself: “Josh, after digging all those ditches, how does your lower back feel?”

Short answer:

Tomorrow I am having the irrigation experts come by to install a new digital controller, and new valves, according to the new sprinkler layout. This will allow us to run different zones (front lawn) more often than others (around the pool). This way, we can keep the lawn super-saturated without over-watering the palm trees around the pool.

We are almost ready to re-sod the yard, with Hank Hill-approved St. Augustine. Before we can re-sod, there remains a single palm tree in the front yard. It is a ratty old Queen palm, about 25′ tall. I’m not yet sure how I’m going to remove it (hint: call someone with a clue). However, once that tree is gone, and the surrounding bushes, we will re-sod the front lawn and plant a new palm tree. But what kind?

Option A: The Silver Bismark

The Silver Bismark is a pretty blue-green color, and can fill out a front yard nicely.

Option B: Coconut Palm

The Coconut Palm is the “classic” palm tree, and when grown in double or triples, the trunks form a nice wavy pattern. The downside: those coconuts end up all over the front yard, and rot unless you pick them up.

Option C: Bronze Statue of Myself Wearing a Toga

I think this would make a statement, but Mo is not convinced. We shall see.

The Barren Wasteland

Fixing up this dump has been, without a doubt, the best exercise I’ve ever gotten. For example, check out these guns:

The bushes beside the pool were pulled out the old fashioned way: cheap, Irish labor. Then we continued the fence:

Now we have a small area beside the Florida room for the essential barbeque.

Sadly, now that I’ve torn out everything to make room for the fence, the only thing left is our small hibiscus tree.

Did you notice the snake living there?

His name is Fred. He’s going to be crashing with us for awhile (he’s looking for a new job).

The Hedge Goes Down

About a year ago, while debating whether to move to Florida, my soon-to-be-in-laws protested that Florida is too hot in the summer. I countered that Florida only gets to about 95*F, which is about the same as New York. I would like to remind the world that, technically speaking, I was correct. But here’s the thing about Florida: the humidity hovers around 190%, except during the sporadic and continuous thunderstorms. Needless to say, working in the yard is a soggy experience.

It took a bit longer than expected, but we got that hedge down, and got the privacy fence up.

Update, Sep, 27, 2007: this tree was invaded by an army of fire ants, and fell down during a tropical thunderstorm. It’s a shame: I really liked that tree.

Three sides down, one side to go!

The Backyard: the story so far

My battle against the backyard has been epic. In the past eight months, I have removed 4 dumpsters worth of vegetation, leaving a barren wasteland of sorrow and broken dreams.

While digging out the jungle, I broke several key pieces of the underground sprinkler system. As a result, the lawn has been dying a slow death as I continue to remove everything green. We have been able to salvage a few trees, but everything else had to go. There was no way to prune this stuff back- it had become totally overgrown, and it had to go.

To hide my shame from the neighbors, I would like to circle the entire yard with a privacy fence, like this:

That hedge is my next target. My neighbors are as disgusted as I am, and have agreed that starting fresh is the only way to go. Hiding within that hedge is a chain link fence, forming a tangled knot of hellish overgrowth. In the next week I hope to remove that hideous hedge, and continue the fence.

Once this fence is in place, we’re 2/3rds done. We have another chain link fence on the remaining side, but a (relatively) well-maintained bush lives there, and I think I can work around it.

Once the fence is done, we’ll need to replace the irrigation system. This will require us to plot out the rest of our backyard planting, and that’s a daunting task in and of itself.

Believe it or not, we love plants, and want to fill our yard with a bunch of exotic and cool stuff. However, before we can get to the fun stuff, we have to finish cleaning the slate.

I expect to be finished sometime in the next 50 years.