Finishing up in the Yard

Sunday April 18th and the last day of my stay in Vegas. It has been wonderful spending time with Erin. both her and I have enjoyed the experience of gardening in the southwest desert and have learned a lot. Erin is looking forward to continuing to beautify her yard.




Above is the view from her bedroom window.


While I was there I celebrated my birthday with Erin. She even bought me a cake! Yum!









One of the last things we did in Erin's yard was to hang a bird feeder. Within a few hours there were birds feeding.
























Lucy and I became good friends.









Erin's livingroom.









The open kitchen, dining area and staircase. I gave her one of mom's table cloths for her round table.









Front entrance.












Below are recent photos of 2 of Erin's new plants.
The Yucca has blooms coming.








And the Lemon Bottle Brush is also in bloom.

Moving Lucy's Grass

Today we want to move the "rug" as I call it. The artificial piece of grass that Erin's dog, Lucy, just loves to lay on, so of course we have to keep it!!

As with the rest of the yard, we first did some measuring as to where the patio would be and where Erin wanted the grass to be. We decided that we would turn it to be parallel to the house and future patio.

Then we got to pulling up the edging and the stakes that held it in the ground.









Lucy was there to help!









Grass is ready to be moved.










Erin trims the grass to a bit smaller size to fit the space.









Grass is in place and ready to be anchored down.









Erin waters the grass down to settle the new ground below it.













Candy installs the edging and hammers in the stakes that hold the grass in place.









Erin fills in around the edging.









And Lucy is pleased that we have kept her grass.









A hat helped with the sun today.
Lucy relaxes after a busy day in the yard!

Death Valley Wild Flowers

Yellow wild flowers blanket Death Valley


We decided to take a break today and take a drive through the southern half of Death Valley to see the wild flowers. We first drove thru Pahrump up to the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.


These are some pictures we took along the trail.
































Below are Death Valley wild flowers

Day Two of the Las Vegas Garden Project

This is the back of Erin's house and yard.

Another beautiful morning in Vegas!! After admiring our sun tans from yesterday and taking some advil for our aches and pains, we got back to work. After supper last night we had taken a ride over to Star Nursery to check it out. What a wonderful place. Here we got the sprinkler parts that we needed: plugs, new heads and other tools. Walking through the aisles of plants we picked out a Red Lemon Bottle Brush plant to train on the new trellis we bought at Target.

Erin continued to plant the rest of her plants on the north side of the yard, and reposition the sprinklers so each plant had two heads by it. Here she is planting the yellow Kangaroo Paws.

I started clearing the south side.
Here is what the southside looked like before I got at it with the clippers and shovel!

The bush by the corner of the house was moved to the back of the yard. The flowering low growing plant was moved to the northside of the yard.

This pretty yellow flowered bush was saved. It has very interesting pods on it.

The rest were taken out. I got "bit" and "scratched" more than once from those thorned bushes. At the end of the day we took 9 garbage bags of debris to the curb!! We planted 3 White Oleanders against the wall

And 2 Royal Purple Bougainvilla in front of the oleanders.

Below, Erin moves this pretty plant to the north side.

Here is the new north yard.

And the new south yard.

We relax after another day of hard, but fun, work!










Tomorrow we take a break and go to Death Valley to see the wild flowers.

Gardening in Las Vegas

A couple of weeks ago I traveled to Las Vegas to visit my daughter. She had bought a beautiful home in Las Vegas that had a very nice yard already. But she wanted to change things up a bit. Enter me.

I arrived late on Wednesday night so I toured the inside of the house and then we crashed.

Early Thursday morning I awoke to sunshine and fresh coffee. Looking out the patio doors that face west, I was treated to a view of the mountains, glowing in the morning light. Some still had snow capped peaks. Beautiful. Just think, Erin sees these everyday!!

After a leisurely breakfast, we spent the morning planning what we wanted to keep in the yard, what had to be trimmed and what had to go! With this in mind, our first plan of action was to go to the store and buy the tools we would need: a shovel, pruning shears, a trowel, rake and hose.
We also picked up an interesting plant called Kangaroo Paw in yellow. We bought 3.

The first new plants for her yard. Also bought a yucca plant that was on clearance for $4.00. We would find a place for it.

This is the north yard before.The 2 yellow and green bushes in front were moved to the north wall on either side of the trellis where we planted the Lemon Brush. The rest of the plants along the wall were removed. We found out the hard way that the big bushes with red berries on has nasty thorns!
Next we needed to find where the sprinkler system ran and how it worked. By finding the start of it we dug until we found a connection. Then dug up the ones that would be in the way of the patio ( a new 12' x 24' patio will be add to the back of the house), moved the plants they fed and figured out where we needed the water sources.

The rest of the day was spent uncovering water lines and digging up dead and unwanted plants.

After a great day in the sunshine, we relaxed under the shade trees.