Thursday, June 23, 2011

A Visitor’s Perspective

I almost never post wide shots of my yard when I am posting pictures on my blog. For some reason, they just don’t look very good to me. I think it’s because the pictures just don’t seem to do it justice.

On the day of the garden tour last month, my mother-in-law took pictures of my gardens. So here it is, a visitor’s perspective:

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This is the first garden you see when you enter the backyard from the driveway. The lady head watches contently from her corner here. There was a magnificent yellow angel trumpet in this bed a few years ago, but the last two winters did it in. Now, I am trying to get a Jatropha integerrima to take hold.

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This next garden is one of several island beds. There used to be two old Bradford pears here, I’m trying to get two queen palms to take their place. The candlestick plants are in the middle of this picture (in front of the white obelisk), they actually came up from the roots this year. They also had some babies just in case they didn’t make it through the colder months.

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On to the next island bed, which my husband affectionately refers to as the peanut bed. This one gets full sun and is filled with salvias, TX rock rose, artemesia ‘powis castle’, ageratum, and a few others.

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Here, our oldest puppy, Rusty is enjoying his new found water bowl. The gazebo is a great place to hang out year-round, especially when the mosquitoes are out. One good thing about the low rainfall this year is that it has kept the mosquito population under control. Speaking of rain, that’s the rain garden in the background, it has been very dry this year. Luckily, we just got about an inch and a half of badly needed rain.

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Now, looking out from the gazebo. In the foreground is the new rose bed and in the background are the veggie beds, fruit trees, and my stockpile of leaves.

I guess the wide shots of the gardens don’t look too bad after all.

7 comments:

  1. Wow, you have a lot going on! Looks great! Did you have your rain barrels ready and waiting for that precious rain yesterday?

    Happy summer,
    David/ Tropical Texana

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  2. Your island beds are lovely.

    What happened to the old Bradford Pears you mentioned?

    Love the picture of your dog lapping up water from the fountain.

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  3. You have a lovely yard, from any perspective.

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  4. @David Yes, the rain barrels were ready. They are about a quarter full now.

    @TheDogLikeCynic Honestly, they just looked really bad and they never flowered, so we had them removed.

    @Dorothy Thanks!

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  5. Actually David, it looks like they are each about 1/3 full, so that's 200 gallons of fresh rain water!

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  6. Wow, love your gazebo. Where can I buy one of those.

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  7. Phuong, we bought ours from http://www.discountgazebos.com/

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