New House Blog: Episode LCV - Yet More Gardens

We like our gardens.  We like to look at our gardens.  We like to acquire new and exotic plants for our gardens.  We like to talk and blog about our gardens.  We sometimes even like doing the work necessary to start and maintain our gardens.  Fortunately for us, we have designed some of our gardens with the idea that they will require little maintenance.  The succulents in our front yard garden, for instance, should need less water and care than the plants in our eating garden.  Likewise, our cactus garden, which hasn't been publicly revealed yet, but is publicly revealed later on in this Episode, should require only minimal watering and care.  Also revealed in this Episode is a treasure trove of newly-discovered artifacts from the back yard.

Berry Plants

We do not consider the berry plants to be a garden, or part of a garden, but they are close to each other.  While at the nursery browsing for cactus plants and food-bearing plants, we chanced upon the few remaining red raspberry plants and since Becky is a big fan of raspberries and has fond memories of growing and eating them during childhood, we picked up two seedlings.  We also spotted an interesting-sounding blueberry variety, and Bish has fond memories of eating blueberry pancakes while camping on Whidbey Island in the summers of his childhood, so we added it to our shopping cart.

 As you can see, the raspberry plants are near one of our balcony's support beams.  They should get plenty of sun there.

The pink lemonade blueberry plant is near the other balcony support beam.  It, too, should get plenty of sun.  The straw underneath the plant is from our own back yard.

Before planting our berry plants we had to do a bit of soil preparation.  First we had to dig the holes, and since our back yard's native dirt is hard and clay-like we decided to dig large holes and fill them with our soil mixture to provide a lot of room for the roots to spread out in good soil before hitting the clay soil.  Our mixture included regular garden soil, some of the native dirt, and a large dose of special soil that is formulated specifically for acid-loving plants.  Hopefully this more acidic soil ph will also discourage weed growth in the immediate vicinity.

Pottery Garden

As if having a real back yard garden, and a front yard succulent garden wasn't enough, we started a pottery garden on our balcony.  Both Becky and Bish have a long history of pottery gardening, and we have both found that some plants do very well in pots.  We have several varieties of bell pepper in our pottery garden, along with romaine lettuce, thyme, oregano (only one small sprout so far), and green and purple basil.  The peppers were planted as seelings, and the rest were started from seeds.

This is an overview of the pottery garden.  Starting from the top of the frame we can see the giant marconi bell pepper in the blue pot, the romaine lettuce in the corner pot (hidden from view at this angle), the purple bell pepper in the grape-leaf decorated pot (behind the tail of the fishy pot), the red bell pepper and yummy snacking bell pepper in the fishy pot, the oregano and thyme in a yellowy circular pot, the purple and green basil in the other yellowy circular pot, and the orange bell pepper and green bell pepper in the closer fishy pot.

Satchmo inspected the fishy pot and decided that it was not a suitable place for napping.

 This is a closer-up view of the marconi bell, the romaine, and the purple bell.

This is a closer-up view of the red bell, yummy snacking bell, oregano, thyme, green and purple basil, and orange and green bells.


Cactus Garden

As if all of that wasn't enough to satisfy our garden craving, we planted a cactus garden.  It is in the back yard between the pear tree and the dwarf tangerine tree, and though it is small right now it has a lot of room for potential growth.  This area gets a lot of all-day sun, so it seemed like a natural fit for cactus.  Before planting the cactus garden we dug a large pit in the hard clay dirt, and we filled the cactus pit with a mix of gardening soil, special cactus-specific soil, gypsum, fertilizer, and native dirt.  As with the berry plants, we did this so that the cactus garden plants would have a large area of good soil in which to grow and get strong before they encounter the hard clay dirt that is endemic to this area.

 This is the cactus pit.  Squarehead is included in the photo for scale.  Spike and Longspade were also used for digging the cactus pit.

This is, to date, the first and only picture of Yours Truly, Bish, in an Episode of the New House Blog.  I am standing in the cactus pit.  This should convey some idea of the pit's depth.  Also seen in this picture is my awesome straw gardening hat.

 This is an overview of our cactus garden.  We have five varieties at this time: two prickly pear, two rat-tails cacti, two curiosity cacti, two angel wing cacti, and one sunburst cactus.

 This view shows one of the prickly pears.

 This is a close-up of the sunburst cactus.  Sadly, this little guy got stepped on  before being planted.  It seems to be doing ok, though, and we respectfully buried a branch that broke off when it was stepped on.

 This is what the rat tail cacti look like. They have little tiny fuzzy-looking needles that are not so fuzzy to the touch.  They even managed to penetrate my work gloves in several places.

Here we see what the angel wing cacti (the specimen on the left) and the curiosity cacti (the specimen on the right) look like up close.  As with the rat tails, the curiosities have insidious little fuzzy-looking spines that are quite adept at penetrating work gloves and human skin.

So far all cacti are doing well, and we are seeing new growth in the cactus garden.

BYA Update

While digging the hole for the blueberry plant we discovered two ancient pre-Bishopian artifacts - a rusty, corroded bolt of some sort, and a blue glass marble.

This rusty bolt is larger, and of a different style than the rusty nails we have previously uncovered.  We do not yet know the meaning or significance of this blue glass marble.




While digging the cactus garden pit we discovered several rusty nails of three different types.  These nails were not, as might initially be surmised, cast-offs from the recent fence replacement, and they were not remnants of the old fence.  They were buried too deeply, and corroded too much, to be recent additions to the dirt.

The different levels of corrosion would seem to indicate different metal compositions.  Also, we're not sure how the pre-Bishopians would have used the bent nails.  Obviously they would have been used to join wood at a corner or angle, but how would they have driven in such nails?  What kind of tools would they have had access to?

Finally, while doing maintenance on the pear tree, and clearing the weeds from around its base, we dug up this ancient dog chew toy.  Obviously it was meant for a small dog.  The question remains, however: did the pre-Bishopians practice animal husbandry or was this small dog purchased or traded for?

 I'm guessing that this ancient dog chew toy was either purchased or acquired in a trade.  It is inconceivable to me that the pre-Bishopians would have this level of plastic-forming technology.

This is the other side of the artifact.













Bonus Photo

We close out this exciting Episode with this bonus picture, taken not far from our New House.  Do you know what it means?

We know what it means.
     bIsh