Green Thumbing

Today I decided to get out into the front yard and take care of a few landscaping issues that had been bothering me for a bit.

First up was repotting some plants. The larger one was in a wooden pot that had half rotted, and was too light for the heavy succulent that tended to lean out over the edge. As such, it would often tip over if the wind picked up when the soil wasn't wet enough.

The last time it tipped over and I tried to lift it back up, only a small part came up in my hand.

Lesson for you all: never make pots out of material that will decompose. I certainly wouldn't have picked this pot myself, but it was leftover from the previous owner so free is free I guess.

Anyway, I picked up a new pot at the Home Despot, roughly the same size, and after peeling the remains of the pot off the root ball I dropped it in place and shoved in a bit more dirt to pack things into place.

Much better. I also tilted the old root ball a bit so the succulents weren't leaning so heavily over the side.

Next up was this tiny pot with a very oversized succulent in it.

The pot has a few cracks in it, too, which doesn't help matters. Pulling out the root ball showed it to be quite heavily root bound, so I upgraded it to a concrete pot that had been in the back yard, previously holding some plant I can't remember that had been left behind by the previous owner as well, and which had since died.

This is much more appropriately sized.

I kept the cracked pot rather than tossing it in the bin, as I figured it might make a good candidate for kintsugi if I happen to get bored enough to try that. It's got a good color for it, at least.

Next up was filling some holes in the front yard. I think some of the holes were from plants that died, either under the care of the previous owner or thanks to my darwinian approach to plant care. Weed out the high maintenance plants the natural way!

I didn't put too much thought into it, I just surfed the aisles at the Home Despot on my way to getting the replacement pot and found a couple of plants that looked nice.

First up is a Spanish Lavender that found a home to the left side of the yard near the front. There's a few larger shrubs here so I figured this one would fit in nicely.

Next came a Mexican Heather, which is a bit smaller and should be a good fit for the middle of the yard. Oddly enough, when I dug in the small depression that I assumed was the remains of a previous plant, instead of finding a bunch of nursery soil and rotted roots, I just found a hole filled entirely from top to bottom with mulch. I think the landscapers who originally put in the front yard must have been intending to plant something there, then I guess they forgot and just covered the whole yard with mulch, empty hole and all? Weird.

Worked out well for me, though, as some other parts of the yard are a little bit thin on mulch and it saved me having to haul another bucket of sticky, sandy clay to the back yard.

Finally I planted a pink blueberry (which is a bit of an odd thing, I have to admit) under the palm tree. This may or may not end up being a mistake, as the plants around the palm tend to get a little bit bruised when the palm gets its beard trimmed every year. I guess we'll see how it fares.

It's just a wee sapling right now, but it should shoot up to 3-4 feet high. This will be a refreshing change from having to bend over to pick the blueberries from the low bushes around Flin Flon.

And here's the after pic. Doesn't look like much yet, but it'll grow in over time.

Of course, after doing all this I remembered that there was a fourth spot I wanted to stick something in, next to the driveway. Oops. Well, there's always next weekend.