We have been very busy over the last week planting, planning and digging.
I was digging holes planting strawberries and planning out our Mediterranean garden, and Dom and Vicki were digging out the pond for our new ducklings.
Of course the ducklings can’t go into the pond until they are a bit older, but we are getting ready for their arrival.
The photo to the left is of our Lily of the Nile.
I find these flowers captivating and beautiful. They just have this way of commanding our full and undivided attention.
Each morning when I go out to water our newest additions to the garden, I keep staring and staring as though I were waiting for them to speak to me. I think they do speak to me…they speak peace. Their graceful ways, royal hues of color and majestic elegance make me want to bow down and claim my allegiance. I am altogether enraptured by them.
Other things planted this past week are Waxleaf Ligustrum, Everbearing strawberries, Concord grapes, Redflame grapes, green grapes.
I have a theme going for our Mediterranean garden but we came to find out this morning that we can’t grow olives here. That makes me very upset since all the research I’ve done to date indicated that there are certain olives that will grow in zone 7.
When we went to order them this morning, the sales man wouldn’t even recommend we purchase them for our area, and he had no suitable olive that would grow here. I thought I was going to cry! But I must say that I found his honesty refreshing since he didn’t just try to sell us the trees anyway to make a quick buck.
If anyone reading this is from the Albuquerque area and you are growing olives successfully, please leave me a comment to let me know what kind of olives you have. We really want to grow them here, but I’m unwilling to sacrifice four good trees just to “see” if they will grow here.
In the Mediterranean garden we’ll also be planting figs. Obviously everything in this particular garden is not Mediterranean, but maybe that makes it extra special to me.
Finding some outstanding hyssop will be next on my agenda to plant near the grapes, and we’ve been looking at some gorgeous ground covers for color and interest. Here are a few photos of the areas we are working on:
Planted in the front row on each side of this little garden are lavender…four on each side. Behind the lavender are strawberries. Behind the strawberries are Waxleaf Ligustrum. Beyond the Waxleaf near the fence is one of our artichoke patches and up against the fence are Armenian cucumbers growing.
This photo is of the other side of the same little garden. Hooking around to the left are strawberries, in the center is a pomegranate, in the front is lavender, and of course in the center is Lily of the Nile.
I don’t have photos of our grapes yet since I planted them yesterday and I still need to shape the area.
Below is a flashback from what the area looked like last year before we planted the Mediterranean garden:
Here are some photos of Dom and Vicki beginning the process of digging the pond out. We were going to do the pond in the chicken pasture, but at the last moment changed our minds and decided to place it in the front of the house.
We have a really nice slope that goes up to the side porch and we do want to have a butterfly room in front of of the porch. Having a pond right in front will create a micro climate for when we have butterflies…especially when we need to overwinter them.
Recent Comments