Big changes at Ragna's garden

Regular readers will remember Ragna's garden from my previous posts and its presentation on local PBS gardening show Central Texas Gardener (CTG).  Soon after the CTG crew finished, Ragna began making big changes to her back garden.  She spent most of the last six months working on this major makeover which surprised many of us who loved the garden as it was.  But her roses had been affected by chilli thrips and she did not want to go through the process of treating them with chemicals.  She was also ready to cut back on maintenance and add more waterwise plants.

Here's a photo from last fall before she began removing the roses and making changes.  My post from spring 2012 will show more of how the garden looked back then.

 

First Blogiversary today!

Today I celebrate the first anniversary of this blog.  One year of blogging.  What else is there to say? Quite a bit actually.   I've learned so much and had such a good time with my 147 published posts.  In honor of the occasion I'm sharing a few observations.

"Zeroscape"

So where did the lawn go?  Answer: we never had one.  So let's see how the front yard got to its current state over the years.

Our realtor wanted to keep driving when she saw the front yard, and did not want to even stop to show us inside the house.  After moving in, the new neighbors and friends dropped hints that we should do something about the yard.  The problem?  Just a sea of gravel under the live oaks with a few shrubs dotted around as shown in these scanned photos from 1995.