January

2011

Rockery project

Rockery view from lake

Rockery project with engineer

Lake side planting bed project goals: improve walk from dust to durable, attempt to redo rockery to minimize weed issues and provide place for pots, add ground cover shrubs to southwest corner of rockery

Rockery After

Better!

With rosemary and boug

We bought some cheap colorful chairs for use in the entrance and on the lake patios.

Another garden goal has been to increase organic approaches.  Years ago Mike made an enclosed rail tie area for grass clippings.  I tried to turn this into a compost area.  Just adding kitchen compost didn't work so I removed half of the dried grass clippings and added dirt from the new rockery project.  I included  green grass clumps with worms.  The whole thing was sprinkled with a hose and covered with a green plastic tarp.  To date I've turned it once and added more kitchen compost.  Moisture is being retained now and I hope for the breakdown of the kitchen compost to enrich the soil if not for this spring perhaps next fall. I'd like to make this compost a viable organic soil alternative.  Others at Lake Tamarisk don't appear to be doing much if anything in this regard.  Problem: biting red ants gather under parts of the tarp and rocks used to secure it.  Danger.