Starting work on the back yard

Before moving into our house, I’d never really had any good experiences with plants, and considered myself a black thumb. Plant experiences were not something I really enjoyed, and I never really “got it” when hearing people talking about how they relaxed or took a sense of satisfaction from gardening.

Since becoming homeowners with a blank slate of a yard, though, my attitude and experiences have done a 180. With several happy hydrangeas growing in the yard and 3 bearing citrus, a happy palm tree, lots of lovely morning glories and moon flower vines and sundry other pretties, I’m finding myself understanding what people mean with the “relaxing” and “satisfying” comments.

We had our first (and probably only) hard freeze earlier this week, and so some of the plants suffered. It’s sad seeing what were pretty blooms just a few days ago now looking like dead, wilted lettuce hanging on the front yard fence. But, temps were back up in the lower 60s today, so I took advantage of the shift in weather and laid down a flowerbed and planted the tulips that had been in my refrigerator since October.

Hopefully come March, there will be a lovely showing of a mixture of tulips and daffodils (along with some freesia in pots — love their smell — and strawberries) in the back yard.

An update on the citrus: no harm done with the recent cold weather, and in fact today I picked a dozen ripe fruits from the limequat (including 3 or 4 that had fallen to the ground). There are at least a dozen more on the tree that will be ready in a week or two. That tree has had 4 full harvests now, and doesn’t seem to show any signs of slowing down. It’s a tremendouly prolific producer! The satsuma had a crop of 4 fruits that were simply delicious — incredibly easy to peel with a lovely delicate flavor. I am looking forward to seeing what it produces next fall! The Meyer lemon had two lemons on it, and they were both quite juicy and flavorful. One of them was sitting on the ground so was a little rotted out on one side, and we didn’t get to enjoy the whole fruit. This is supposed to eventually be a rather heavy producer, so… it’s all good!

Anyhow, on to the cold weather plants, now. I picked up some alyssum and cyclamen to plant in the coconut husk baskets hanging on the shed in the back yard. Below are some shots of the tulip/daffodil flowerbed, and the bowl of limequats that were harvested today.

The tulip varieties planted are (left to right): Queen of the Night, World’s Favorite, Happy Generation and a bunch of Darwin hybrid mixes. The daffodils were a big bag of trumpet mixes, so we’ll see what they look like. The freesia are single mixes (and are in pots).