Front Yard Progress

4/9/2014: I made a bigger ring around the Italian Stone Pine and mulched it well with bark and fertilized it with one gallon of Miracle Grow (its only shot for the season). A portrait. So far, I have noticed the bottom branched growing upward and the needles coming back to green. Doing well so far! I only hope it straightens up a bit. I swear I planted it plumb to the yard.

Also, another shot of the Cypress and ottos for good measure. The Cypress still wants to lean outward so I staked it for a while longer

And......DONE!

4/9/2014: I got all the bulbs planted over the past two days. So other than weeding and putting in gravel (once the bulbs start coming up) I am done with this garden. One last picture for posterity. Now the really hard part comes - the waiting.

Note, I also added a potted hot pink azalea, which brings a nice splash of color to the garden. And it will stay in the pot.

Kitchen Garden

I moved some of the more tender, dry-loving herbs like the thyme and sage to the KG. I added one lemon thyme plant from Fred Meyer - I wish I had bought more than one! - and the new Tiny Tower Cypress that was on the patio and is just about dead, though I can't figure out why. Windburn, maybe? Too much water in the pot? At any rate, I'm hoping moving it into the ground might magically heal it.

I thinned these Ottos out pretty good this past weekend. I need at least one more, but I want to give the sun and air a little time to thicken their branches a little. The Italian Cypress has grown about a foot since last summer.

Spring Photos and Update

So.......it felt like a long winter as I planned and thought and rethought what to do in the IG (Italian Garden). As I mentioned at the end of www.villacappello.blogspot.com , things needed to be simplified and some things just needed to be removed because they didn't work.

So, down with the sage, the less hardy rosemarys (sp?), away with the thyme, because as well as the soil drains in this side yard with full sun, it just gets too darn wet. Also, I discovered that the dominant form of lavender here needs to be 'Grosso', because it forms a nice, green ball that stays beautiful even through the winter. Spanish or Provence lavender deserve a place here in between, but they get too - ahem, 'rustic', in the off-season.

Today I finished all the major perennial plantings. I added five more 'Grosso' and yesterday I put out the purple artichoke starts and said a prayer over them. If they take off I will be excited beyond measure; if they die -- oh well. Oh, and I planted 2 Santolinas. I was very excited to find them at Sunnyside Nursery.

Now the main skeleton is really done. In a couple of weeks I have some bulbs to add, but for now it's time to just let things grow and weed.

2014 (or MMXIV): New Beginnings, New Blog

Why a new blog for 2014? The short answer is that my access to www.villacappello.blogspot.com has mysteriously disappeared from the dashboard, though the site is still there at its normal address for all the world to see.

Very frustrating, but instead of spending a lot of time pursuing the issue through the website, I decided that starting a new blog each year for the garden would actually be quite helpful. I can compare the photos on them side by side, and keeping the years (and blogs) separate would be useful as far as keeping track of what has been done.

So, a new spring begets a new blog for 2014.