HAVE MOWER, HOE, AND SHOVEL, will travel

Everywhere that Fiorella and Husband have lived, they've improved the looks of the land, even from their very first residence, a duplex with a neglected postage-stamp-sized front yard which they not only mowed and watered, but planted with a camelia and two azealias. Then, when they moved to a two-bedroom house two years later, they planted red sage around the front porch and created a little pond in the back yard, bordering it with yuccas, irises, and crocuses.

In their first "boughten" home, they added three ashes to the front yard, mimosas to the side yards, and cottonwoods to the back yard, then rooted St. Augustine grass, laid a paving-stone path from the garage to the front porch, espaliered pyrocantha on a front wall, and planted boxwoods and daffodils. The yard of their next house, where their children grew up, received a full frontal make-over involving a swooping line of boxwoods and pittosporums, balanced by ligustrums and mountain laurels on the side of the house.

Because their curent abode is in the middle of a five-acre cedar-hardwood jungle, Fio and Husband have spent more time chain-sawing than planting, but they have managed to start a boxwood hedge around the north garden, which they had to replant with nandenas, gardenias, ligustrums, and bayberries after a disastrous professional job. The west garden is still in need, but Fio is confident she and Husband will eventually get it shaped up. After all, landscaping and gardening are their specialties.

Three Confessions

When you spot errors or misspellings in her blog, it's because Fiorella wrote the it during the evening hours, when her brain is half-asleep. Or because she wrote it during the day, when her mind is preoccupied with daily living. Or the dog was disreacting her. Or the sun was in her eyes. Or she just plain made a mistake. Sorry.
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Fio's Spanish-language soap opera is really heating up, and she loves every dram-filled moment of it. Robert is beginning to remember his childhood as Juan Pablo, the goods and the bads of it, the latter of which is that his Aunt Ana, who never did like him, was the one who shoved him through the orphanage door and slammed it shut. Meanwhile his new-found mother and grandmother are driving his live-in-fiance, Julieta, nuts with their efforts to bring her into the family. And then there's Linda, one of Robert's new-found sisters, who's determined to break up his relationship with Julieta. And that's just for starters.
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Fio does not have a good reputation with some of her more eco-concious friends. Not only does she
favor the trapping and elimination of armadillos, but she's planted invasive, non-native trees and bushes in her garden area. Sorry, ladies, but armadillos are nasty creatures that ravage gardens and lawns, and the only decorative flora that can thrive in the hill country are tough cookies like fontinias, nandenas, boxwoods, bayberries, and palmettos.

The Yard

 Facebook is, as advertised, really great for connecting with old friends and acquaintances. Of course, Fio always tries to put her best foot forward.  The photos she posts are framed and cropped so no one will know Fio has a pile of mulch in a corner of the yard and the bayberries still aren't hiding the AC units the way she wants them to.
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Fio's latest outside endeavor, aside from the driveway edging, is lining the west side of the house with cast iron plants. The flowering sages, which had reigned there for about ten years, caught some kind of fungus infection and Fio had to whack them down to the roots, then ask Fernando, her wonderful yard man, to finish the job. But, alas, Fernando comes just once a month so Fiorella has to do the replanting replacement all on her own. Dig, Fio, dig!

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The only drawback to having a driveway lined with rocks is that a riding mower can't get over them gracefully, which is the reason Fio and Husband replaced the rocks with easily-movable four-foot-long landscape timbers at strategic places along the way.  Then Fio realized that although Husband can get his own riding mower through four-foot gaps, Fernando's professional mower needs a five-foot gap. So, yes, that was Fio you saw at Home Depot having eight landscape timbers cut to five-feet plus (just to be sure), lowering the passenger seat of Husband's car as far as possible so the timbers could be loaded, then driving slowly and carefully home and unloading them.  And one of these days,  she promises, she'll get them distributed.

The Household

Fiorella is methodical. She lives by systems and lists. Husband is more of a free spirit, which means Fio never knows where the phone is till she hears it ringing. Grrrr!
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The east creek bed has yielded some very nice rocks, but its footing is more treacherous than the creek to the south, where the rock tree was, and the overgrowth is scary. Who knows what lurks in Fiorella's back woods?
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Has Fio told you that the sages on the west side of the house are being consumed by a fungus? She used her pruners to cut down one of them and ended up with a twenty-minute coughing jag. Allergy? Who knows, but she's planning to use a chainsaw to take the others down with one fell swipe apiece. That is, if Husband can find where he put the charger.

Love the Weather

Two weeks ago, Fiorella was lowering the window blinds every day to keep the sun out.  Now she's raising them every day to invite the sun in.  And each morning when she goes walking with Sonia Dog, she eyes the landscaping in the north planting bed and plots fresh schemes to tame it.  And she's checked with Husband about chainsawing the dead trees for firewood.  And she's planning to remove the wire cages around the wax myrtle bushes.

Yeah, after a long summer isolated inside the air-conditioned house, Fio is ready to tackle the great outdoors again.  

The Yard

Fio has always thought that, given enough time, and she could do anything, a confidence that must be in the DNA because Aunt Julie once said the same thing about herself.  More to the current point, if Fio stares at a problem in the house or the yard long enough, she can eventually remedy the situation.  Thus in her former home, she spent a great deal of time sitting on the floor of the unfurnished living room until she figured out what to do with it.  And in her current home, she is staring at the yard.

The expensive landscaping didn't work.  Most of the plants died and the armadillos are running riot over the grub-rich imported dirt.  They're even tearing up the weed barrier Fio hired McHandyman to put down.  The future is obvious.  Fio's going to check out the prices on flagstones and experiment with putting them down without mortar in one of the planting beds.

Oh, Mr.  McHandyman . . . .

Deer and Drought Resistant

As far as Fiorella's concerned, spring is here. She's put away her jeans in favor of shorts, and Husband visited the nursery yesterday, where he sank a small fortune into yucca and rosemary, both of them deer- and drought-resistant.

Fio loves the new view. The grass is bright green, and wildflowers are beginning to bloom on the verges of I-35--baby bluebonnets in the midst of millions of little yellow dots. The pink primroses should show soon. And the red paintbrushes.

Fio and Husband don't have any bluebonnets on their property, but they do have purple verbena, wild and tame. Those weird butterfly bushes the landscaper planted are in full bloom, but Fio is preparing to replace them with rosemaries because she doesn't want to ruin her other hip nursing the butterflies through the drought this summer like she did last year.

Yes, summer will come, the rain will dry up, and the drought will be in full swing again, but this time Fio and Husband will be better prepared.

Yucca and rosemary, that's the way to go.

To Kevin

Fiorella has been trying to figure out a way to gently get the idea across to her landscaper that she needs him to check in with her:

Where, oh, where, has Kevin gone--
The one I am depending on
To finish up our zoysia lawn?
And to replace five plants now dead,
And have his skillful workmen spread
Brown stain across the rusty red?
To haul away the cedar pile,
Teach me to work the sprinkler dial?

I've been waiting--quite a while.