Yardwork, Wildflowers & Wildlife -- Summer 2010

After the landscape plan and all our noodling around in our heads, the first phase of making the plan become a reality had to be clearing the area immediately around our house. It was not terribly bad, but there were piles of desert debris from the grading for our house and from some time in the past. There was lots of mistletoe that needed to be removed from the trees and the trees needed to be pruned up to look like trees rather than bushes. Dead bushes needed to be removed along with dead and dying prickly pear and cholla.

We got a tiny start on that in the spring, but neither of us has the energy, the tools or the knowledge to do it all. Trout mostly worried about how you get rid of the stuff after you prune. I learned how and that comes later.

We knew that it should cost about $1000 to do all this, and it did. The folks that did the work for us, Candy's Yard, live out here and I think they did a great job. In fact they did more than I originally expected. I suspect that we will use them again sometime in the future. It took about 100 work hours to do all this.

There are lots of pictures here. I tried to get before and after shots, but they aren't exact. They should be good enough for you to get the idea, though. So let's get started.

Entrance from the road before...

...and after.

I have no before pictures of this ditch along the south side of the house. The bush is a type of acacia. Trout wanted to shape it like a ball, but the newspaper person managed to run into it and break some of the trunks, so it got pruned as good as could be done considering that. We are facing west here.

This is the east side of the driveway. That's a small native mesquite in the foreground. It will grow much larger if it gets water. The runoff has created kind of a well around it, so that should happen. Unlike palo verdes, mesquites like to get their feet wet and a lot of water won't kill them. If palo verdes get lots of water, they die.

Utility easement east of the house before...

...and after. You can see a couple of posts sticking up in the before picture. That's the actual property line. We can plant to the left of it, but we have to accept that whatever goes in there might be ripped up if someone needs to get to the underground utilities in this area.

Rock retaining wall on the east side of the house before...

...and after. The truck you see exiting the driveway is the Candy's Yard vehicle.

Rain barrels on the north side of the house before...

...and after. You can't even see through the thick, mistletoe-laden palo verde on the left in the before picture. The rebar with the orange top is the property line with our nearest neighbors. The ditch is to help with runoff during heavy rains.

Heading back out toward the road (south), this is the entrance area looking south from the north before...

...and after. They took out some dead prickly pear and some tree trunks and limbs that had been lying there for who knows how long.

South side of the house facing west before. That palo verde on the left looks so thick because of the heavy load of mistletoe.

That "blue" cactus is from house paint. It turned out this this one was dying due to grubs. It was all black at the base.

Here's the after. It looks like a road down the side of the house, but it is really a drainage feature. We will see if it works if we ever get any rain.

This is the same drainage area before from the west side of the house. You can see the tire tracks from the backhoe.

This is the after and a good example of the yard folks doing something I didn't expect. They raked and worked over this area (and many others) so well that most of the abrupt dirt edges are now smooth.

Now we start around the house with pictures from the road. This is the south side of the house before...

...and after.

Before (note the piles of dead prickly pear and the dying cholla)...

...and after.

This is a before close up of that cluster of foliage that includes the blue cactus. Along with it there is a good sized Mormon tea, a palo verde and a fairy duster.

This is after. I'm not fond of fairy duster and wouldn't plant one, but I'll take the wild one (little scrawny looking thing in the foreground) as long as I can stand it.

This is what it looked like when it bloomed this year. Maybe it will grow more and be pretty next spring.

This is an after overall view of the south side of the house. Getting rid of so much debris really helps me to visualize where the fence walls will go.

You may remember that 30% of the land is in Natural Open Space (NOS). This is the edge of that from the road before the cleanup.

This is after. The line runs between the palo verde on the left and the mesquite on the right.

This is another shot mostly showing the area we can work on to the right of the mesquite.

This is a before picture from the road toward the southwest side of the house. There's actually evidence of vehicles driving into this property through these two chollas.

And here's the after.

We have several chollas on the lot. They amazingly provide good habitat for birds. You can tell by the nest styles that these are two different birds in these two chollas. They are the ones on either side of the picture.

This is the mesquite we often watch right outside our living room. We see birds, ground squirrels, lizards, rabbits etc.using it for shelter and food. This before picture shows all the debris and dead stuff below it.

And this is after from two angles. By the way, I'm still seeing wildlife around it.

This is facing southwest from our back porch. Before...

...and after.

Facing west from the porch before...

...and after.

Facing northwest before...

...and after.

When I first saw this little sheltered area, I immediately envisioned a little Mexican style garden with a table in the middle. In fact, all our garden will be pretty Mexican in style. These are two before pictures. Note the white drainfield pipe in the right of the pictures.

Here's the after.

Candy's Yard left that clump of grass at the base of the palo verde on the right for a reason. Here's mama quail sitting on her eggs. She's well-camouflaged, eh?

Here are the eggs.

This nest was also left in a palo verde along the west driveway. At first I thought it was mistletoe.

And here's how we would get rid of debris in the future. It's called Mini-Rolloff. They deliver a small dumpster like this. Leave it for 10 days and then pick it up. The cost is $202 for the delivery, pickup, taking it to the dump and 1 ton of contents. If it goes over a ton, you have to pay extra. It seems like a bargain to me. You can see I took this picture when it was ready for pickup.

Remember that early picture with the rain barrels? This is the other side of the utility easement betwen us and our north neighbors. The short bush with the yellow flowers to the left is exactly on our property line. I asked them if they wanted it out or pruned like a tree. They opted for pruned like a tree.

So here's how it looks now. The thick palo verdes on the left are on their property. The pruned and now mistletoe-less one on the right is on ours.

We had a lot of yard debris already on the ground on the west side of the house. Note those white drainfield pipes again in this before.

And this is the after. The west driveway is to the right of these pictures.

And this is a final picture of the west driveway before...

...and after. Fortunately, we did not have to grade in this driveway. It was an old road on the ranch land from long before the development was designed and the county roads were put in.

I know what you're thinking. It looks so bare now. These are some pictures of the natural flora from this spring. Believe me, it and the grasses will come back. That Mexican garden area was pretty clear 3 years ago. And I do intend to plant lots of native wildflowers this fall.

This prickly pear is not native to our land. It's from a plant Joan had at her house. Most prickly pear flowers are yellow, but I loved this so much, I pruned her plant (she couldn't even tell I did it) and planted a bunch of paddles in 2 different places. So far they have all survived and are growing. This is one of the many that bloomed after I planted them.

No LMMM update would be complete without animal pictures. This is a cottontail in the west driveway close to the road.

And I got these shots just last night at dusk. We usually see only one jack rabbit at a time. Lately I've been seeing 2, but this looked like a family to me. This is technically not on our land, but the fern-like plant in the foreground is a Mexican bird of paradise I recently planted, so close enough.

I'm sure this is mom.

I think this is a playful teenager running into the picture. It's too small to be an adult.

At first I didn't see where it went. Is this it or another one with mom? You can only see the extra ears to the left. I didn't even see them until I loaded the picture onto my computer.

I thought, wow, cool, there are 2 of them. Here's where the other one went.

Hmmm? I guess that one wasn't alone. Note the mesquite beans on the tree. That's a favorite food for lots of wildlife around here.

I loved this 4 ears picture.

But wait, there are 6 ears.

These guys are young. I've never seen a real baby jack rabbit. They probably stay underground a long time in this area like the baby cottontails do. Forget about the coyotes. They also have to worry about hawks, owls, rattlesnakes etc. when they are little.

And mom remains vigilant.

That's it for this post. I probably should have spent the time it took to do this on sewing curtains, but this is more likely to get lost in the shuffle than that.