First Things First: Hard Scape

First Things First

1 Hard Scape

 We put in sidewalks.  We tried to avoid straight lines.  We have a path to go all around the yard.  We put in the pond, the very best thing in our garden.  And we put in a sprinkler system.  All of these were good decisions and I am so glad we started there.

We had Rick Martinez, of Martinez Bobcat Service remove the white rocks from the side yard.  When he was done, he offered to move the huge rocks that had just been delivered.  Then he removed some buried cement by our driveway, dug up tree roots, delivered some other big rocks, and tilled in the soil amendments.  I fantasized about owning a Bobcat.  He had attachments for scooping, jack-hammering, trenching, and all kinds of things.  Rick ended up doing a lot of work for us.  The man is an artist with a Bobcat!   It was my pleasure to watch him work while thinking about how much work he was saving my back.  I actually enjoyed writing him checks! 

My son, Jon, and husband, Allen, put in a big pond and waterfall.  This pond was about 8' x 12' and lined with cement. Jon did much of the planning and prep work.  Allen helped him mix and pour cement while I made runs to Home Depot for more supplies. While we ended up replacing the pond with a rubber-lined one, this cement pond gave us much pleasure for a number of years.  We bought "feeder goldfish" for a dollar or two.  Since then, we've added a few Shubunkin but no pricey Koi for our pond!  We spent a lot of money trying to find a good filtration system.  They all needed a lot of dirty work to clean them out and none of them ever really did a great job.  We eventually paid Paradise Now Ponds to install a natural looking pond with a low-maintenance filter and steep sides to keep the egrets and herons from dining at our pond.  I absolutely love the pond!

We hired a friend from church to install the sprinkler system.  No more standing in the yard with a garden hose!  If you don't have a sprinkler system, you might want to consider planting drought-tolerant plants.  We have one area on the other side of our driveway that is not irrigated.  The statice, sage, and aloe do just fine with neglect.  Everything else gets the water it needs without any consideration other than shutting off the system when rain is on the forecast.