The major consequence of February’s tree planting adventure was that it gave me a serious hankering to get back into the yard and start planning this year’s projects. So I mopped up my major work undertaking of restructuring the Copy Desk and officially shelved my ambition of teaching myself Java Script and pulled out the graph paper. Out came the gardening books and I started making lists of plants I had brought with me and what I knew I wanted to buy for this yard. Having a fresh canvas was exciting but I knew that could get in over my head in a hurry. So I limited this year’s project to just a few beds, the garden and few foundational plantings (aka more trees). I had a week off in the middle of March and started digging.

First chore: remove mulch and pave front patio so I could have somewhere to sit when it rains:

Mulch has to go. And repot tropical lily thing.

Replaced mulch with pavers. Added desk and chair. Potted up lily and added some primroses and snapdragons. Cute, cute, cute. And dry.

Next project was expanding and creating new beds in the front yard.

New bed between my property and neighbor Charles. Then planted a plum tree and put in stepping stones for the mailman.

Connected new side bed with the front porch bed, which I expanded out another 2 feet.

And since I was in a tree planting mood — I planted 2 fig trees and a cherry tree along the north edge of the back yard. Going to be so delicious!

Closest to house is a Desert King Fig, Cherry tree (5-kind hybird), and Brown Turkey Fig.

I moved the sod from the front bed around back, for the beginnings of the next project — the retaining wall.

By the time I was done with front beds, I had a pretty big pile of sod.