The pecan on the east side of the house was due for a trimming. We got an appointment with the arborists in November, but they couldn’t get to it until mid January. We were so lucky- a week or two later on January 27th, we had a severe winter storm; wind speeds topping 67mph, which brought down utility posts and trees in the entire region. At one point, more than 160,000 customers in our county were without power. Our pecan did beautifully, not a single broken branch, even though normally it would drop a couple small branches every year.
We were really grateful to be spared from the winter storm with just a little power outtage. We decided to spend a little time outdoors since the sun was out!
Before
After
During…
A little later…
We decided to work some on our front yard. We had some bird of paradise which was okay, but blocked the light for our other plants. It was also always smacking me as I tried to get out of the passenger side of our car. The african daisy on the ground was very scraggly, and nothing grew or did well in the brick planter. After removing the plants we found that the soil was completely waterlogged and swampy. We amended the soil with lots of compost and lava rocks down to at least 12″ using our tiller. We also found that the brick planter had clay on the bottom half, and no drainage holes at all, so we drilled some along the front.
Before
Begin!
I suppose we were on a bit of a roll, so we decided to redo the garden pathway. Before there were flagstones that were unevenly set into the ground, and no clear boundaries. We decided to remove the flagstones, dig down, set the border with metal bands and fill with decomposed granite. Btw, we started with shovels but quickly moved over to the tiller to loosen up the soil to the necessary depth.
During
And we decided to add a few pavers that were leftover from our patio project to try and tie it all together.
After
After
We forgot to sweep off the paver accents, but it turned out nice.
Here’s the front of our house in March. We put up a short raised succulent bed in front of the brick planter which covered the drainage holes we drilled in the brick. We also created a little footpath with the removed flagstones from our back yard pathway project. We put in some new native plants in the newly amended soil in front, I was so ready for spring and summer!
