Hi Again

So it seems like this is a once-a-week blog lately. That's about how exciting my life is right now. If one of these other jobs pans out and I suddenly get a normal sleep schedule and a normal commute I could see going back to three or four posts a week but I am just not doing projects like I have been in the past.

I come home, do some laundry, clean up the kitchen and take a shower. Then I have dinner and fall asleep, usually to reruns of The Big Bang Theory. My garden projects are in limbo until we decide what to do. And the house is getting painted, one bit at a time, but it is all neutral colors or colors that don't show up on my camera (mad photography skills here).

I hope to get some projects taken care of this weekend and have some pictures to show for it. I just pulled my squash plants out and about half of my tomatoes as it has gotten wet so they are just sad and sloppy now. So once I finish cleaning up out there I want to redo the foundation plantings around where the veggies will go again in spring. Roses, lavender, gaura and loropetalum are the current front-runners as this is only a moderately sunny area and I want to keep the back comparatively more traditional. I have fantasies of dogwoods and rhododendrons for the full shade...

The front, I have other ideas for. We are waiting for a permit to take out the street tree and once that is out we are taking out the sad fruitless mulberry too. And the lawn. It is going to be a big project. And a decent amount of it hinges on what I can get the landlord to fund. There is a nonprofit that will replace the street tree but I want to replace the mulberry with a (very fruiting) navel orange, with a Western Redbud on the side. Currently it is 90% lawn with a couple of small beds up against the house that I have mostly filled with succulents. I want to do a nice mix of low-water stuff like ceanothus and more lavender with succulents. I have some volunteer agaves in pots that will be going in, and the "fence" between our yard and the neighbors is made of yuccas and I want to break that up a little bit and clump them around other places in the yard so they don't look completely random over there (ha).

And I just wanted to share a cute new blog I found, The Color Issue, it is full of fun inspiration  (just what I need right now as the holidays loom).

Pictures soon, I promise!