I'm finding it very hard to believe it's already October. It feels like summer here. The days are a bit shorter and the nighttime temperatures have finally dropped below 70F (21C) but those changes are the only real signs of fall. Although we got a touch of rain early last month, giving us the wettest September in Southern California in 75 years, the garden remains very dry. Daytime temperatures are hovering close to 90F (32C) so work in the garden is still largely confined to early mornings and late afternoons, which has made our work in digging up the backyard area formerly occupied by lawn slow going.
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| I estimate we've cleared between 120 and 150 square feet of soil of grassroots, the plastic mesh used in sod, and rocks but we still have a LOT to do before we can lay paving stones and plant the area |
That's all I'm going to show of the backyard this month. Like last month, instead of showing photos of each of the major areas of my garden for this wide shots post, I'm focusing on just one section: the front garden.
The earliest photos I have of the front of our house were taken by my brother on Christmas Eve Day, 2011, approximately one year after we moved in. They show a front yard with lots of lawn. The lawn was green because the photos were taken in winter, our rainy season, and because irrigation wasn't restricted until 2014.
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| Photo courtesy of ericnp.net |
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| Photo courtesy of ericnp.net |
My first wide shot of the front garden was taken on September 30, 2013.
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| The quality of the photo is poor but you can see that the lawn was still in place |
When I took photos for my wide shot post one year later in October 2014, we were in the middle of digging up the area formerly covered by lawn, going through a process nearly identical to the approach we're currently taking in the backyard.
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| You can see piles of recently dug soil in the far right side of this photo |
By January of this year, we'd completed soil preparation, laid flagstones and planted the area.
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| Most of the plants in the foreground were installed in November and December 2014 |
Last month, I didn't post photos of the front garden but I did take pictures.
This month, the view is much the same except that it shows the bench/plant shelf we added surrounding the Magnolia tree in mid-September. (Details are provided
here.)
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| Photo taken looking east toward the front door from the far side of the driveway |
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| Photo taken looking south |
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| Photo taken looking north |
The starkest before and after comparison I can provide is this one:
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| My brother's photo from December 2011 is on the left and my current photo, taken yesterday from a similar angle, is on the right |
I can only hope that I'll be as pleased by the transformation of the backyard currently in progress as I am with the transformation of the front garden.
As always, my thanks to Heather of
Xericstyle, who started me on the process of collecting wide shots of my garden in 2013.
