Monday, June 27, 2005

End of Spring flowers

I've been talking about our desert landscaping. We pulled up most of the grass last year and put in low water landscaping. Low water does not mean dull - after a year our plants are doing pretty well. The trees are bigger - should have shade next year, then a good size forest. We hit the local community college - they have a low water nursery there and sell assorted things, some you can't find elsewhere. We succumb to temptation, and are filling the yard back in. But still using less than a quarter of the water we did with grass.
Here are some end of spring flowers scattered around that I haven't posted yet. Most are done blooming now that it's up to 100 daily. But the sage is turning purple - starting to look good out front (we have 15 sage plants along the street). They are about 3' high now. Should eventually get up to 6 feet.

Some blue irises the previous owner left behind, relocated to near the front door.

These are California poppies - we bought several seed packets last summer and scattered them around - the ones that get water from the tree and shrub systems got pretty big. To the right of these is a purple lantana, which is just starting to bloom here. Nice and big now. These are in front of a small rock waterfall and some grasses, next to the kitchen patio area out back.

These are oleander - we have some white and red. They were here, and are now over fifteen feet high, and full of flowers for most of the summer.

The purple lantana in front of our Desert Museum palo verde tree, the yellow blooms on that mostly fallen off.

Some little yellow something we got, and put a few around.

Our front courtyard - a few packets of Iceland poppy seeds last fall, and this spring the courtyard is full of pink and red and white. They've gone to seed now and been pulled, but we scattered millions of new seeds from the heads, so next spring should be even more.

Some little pink thing we brought from San Diego - seems to like the courtyard too.
So these are some of our colors - we've more scattered around, and are always getting even more different ones to put in. So low water doesn't mean dull desert.

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