Cooler temperatures this week, with rain a possibility this weekend.
Spots’s breakfast was potato shrub with a white geranium garnish. The geraniums are not a big sell. I found a snake skin beside Spots’s pen when I took breakfast out, without a snake in it. Perhaps molting season has come. The ranch is earning its name of Rattlesnake Gulch.
I dealt with email before starting outside work. I laid commercial mulch around the oenothera in the front slope border garden and along its upper edge. The blooms on the oenothera are lovely but short lived. I want to do all I can to have that plant thrive.
I planted a row of lamium on the slope below the planter that now holds a dahlia in great display. The ground shows signs of runoff from the planter, and I want to make best use of any excess water.
The osteopernum came as a six pack that I planted in a clump. The osteopernum borders the citrus box to the right. Delighted to see blossoms on the lemon tree this spring.
The rest of the lamium found a home in the bowl at the eastern end of the back border garden, with the drainage hole that Mike drilled. If successful, will transplant it into the ground around Myrtle of the Far East. The experimental ice plant in that was given a decent burial and the irrigation feeder was directed to the lamium bowl.
I dug out the back and side of the aptenia bed, replete with embedded Bermuda grass and weeds. I amended the soil and planted two six packs of aptenia. The front edge is still ratty, and I may need to make another run for aptenia. I continue to cut back dead growth from last year’s planting, and it is slow to come back notwithstanding significant water. I may need to the aptenia as an annual and not a perennial and replant it each year. I finished the afternoon by watering everything in and adding a new irrigation feeder to the osteopernum.
A Year at the Snake 