The Garden

Some plants in the garden are putting on a show.  

The garden has been a work in progress since the husband bought the house before we got married. Everything was overgrown, weedy, and plain scary in the beginning.  There was and still is alot to contend with.  Firstly, half the property slopes down. Secondly, the lot is mostly compacted clay soil.  Lastly, there are moles, gophers, birds, squirrels, feral cats, skunks, opossoms, yucky plant-eating insecty things, and our own dogs. You get the picture. Oh yeah, and there was the time the husband went weed whacking in the backyard and ended up with chigger bites all over his body. Not fun. So we've learned through the years through trial and error, (basically, we killed alot of plants and the other half went to the critters) what plants are survivable here. 

The middle photograph shows the Surinam cherry tree that is our spoiled stepchild that refuses to love us back. We bought it as a small plant at an LA arboretum garden show and planted it about six years ago and it is now about four feet tall. And even though we were told it was supposed to be a hardy tree, great in all types of soils, blahblahblah, it has provided us with exactly one teasingly ripe, sweet, juicy, cherry...in the last six years.  Same time every year, the husband goes crazy over this tree. So this season, there are approximately a dozen cherries that are ripening so far, the most ever.  The husband is salivating over this fruit but he must wait until they are a bright red or else they are sour and he must compete with the critters who are also waiting for that bountiful day.

Attention critters, please just leave a couple of ripe ones for the husband, it would make him really, really happy.