Before and After

Well, I did get a little work done the other day. My Weedy Garden is actually a little less weedy today. I decided the other afternoon to spend some time on one of the beds. Here's a before shot...


...and an after shot.


Much better! I pulled about half of a large yard trash bag worth of weeds. Of course, they are likely to just come back again. I wonder if my Weedy Garden will never be NOT weedy. And what will I call it if it isn't?

Woodrow and I have also worked to get the debris pile down. Initially it was much worse than even this...


...but we have since gotten it down even further, since creating my compost bin.


What really freaks me out is that when I rake up the leaves and move a pile, I uncover up to a dozen or more "bugs" (look like roaches) that quickly all scamper for cover. I really have to get over my bug fears (or I need to get a lot more lizards and frogs and birds around here to get the numbers down)!

Here's the compost bin, as of this morning.


The raised bed is looking slightly better than when I first moved in...




...but there's still a long way to go.

I'm not the only one who has done work on the garden. My Mom and Tommy have done a tremendous amount. Remember that HUGE ficus?


Tommy got a hold of it, and turned it into a real tree.


And I have also put up a couple of bird feeders and this little inexpensive birdbath that will have to suffice for the time being.


So I have been working on the jungle little-by-little...

Composting 101

Since embarking on taming my garden, I decided that I would have need of a compost bin of some sort. Money is tight right now due to the new home purchase, and the back corner where I plan on putting a compost bin eventually is currently inaccessible. So I considered my options before settling on a compost bin design that is both inexpensive, easy to assemble and movable.





It is made from plastic hardware cloth staple-gunned to wooden stakes. I lined it with cardboard for further stability, and filled it with yard debris and kitchen scraps.

After studying up on composting, I tried to limit the amount of woody material. It is mostly ficus and olive tree leaves and palm fronds, plus all of the fruit and veggie scraps and coffee left over from Christmas.

I hope to have lots of beautiful compost in the not-to-distant future for use in this crazy garden!

Little By Little

Well, Woodrow and I found a few moments to work on the yard a little yesterday, before company came over for Christmas.

We finally created a compost bin, using inexpensive wooden stakes, hardware cloth and a staple gun and lined with cardboard. It may not be the prettiest thing, but it should do the job, and it is "portable", which is important. I don't know where I may want to relocate it in the future.




I've already filled it with some debris from the yard work that we've done since I moved in, and I've been collecting kitchen scraps from the preparation of Christmas dinner (we did a Mexican-themed Christmas this year).



Woodrow and I also cleaned up some of the debris piled up in the yard. Some of it went into the compost, but a lot of the pile consists of tree branches and other woody material to fibrous to go into the compost bin. So we piled that debris onto a tarp and dragged it around to the front of the house for horticulture pickup. Now I have to get a shovel, so that we can get up the last of the leaves in the debris pile.



Speaking of the tarp: Last Sunday I decided to use a tarp to help get debris around to the street for pickup, and remembered having seen one on a shelf in the shed, apparently left behind by the last tenant. I pulled it out of the shed and tossed it onto the lawn. A little while later, I decided to open up the tarp to check for creepy crawlies (I get a little freaked out over just about all bugs, but am trying to get over it). When I tossed it open, I found what looked like little white balls. Upon closer inspection I realized that I was looking at eggs-- lizard eggs presumably. After a thorough accounting of the eggs in front of me, I found that I had three broken eggs and four unbroken eggs.



I felt bad about having disturbed the eggs and that some had been broken in the process. So I decided to try to place them in a new sheltered nest site, so they will at least have a chance.



We'll see what happens with them, if anything.

Lots more work to do!