More Pruning (2)

So I have a little update on my recent pruning. I had pruned half of the bushes in the front yard hoping that they would come back a little fuller but I was worried about doing the whole run of bushes. I didn't want to spend the whole summer with no screening from the street. That was two and half months ago and the bushes have already sent out a lot of new growth:


Here you can see one of the branches that I cut and the new shoots coming out.


I decided to do the rest of the bushes. The ones that I had left alone hadn't started to send out any new growth so I figured I still had a chance to clean them up.

It looks pretty dense but there are only leaves on the ends of 5 and 6 foot branches. I was afraid that if I let them grow for another year they would be all branch and very little leaf.


I got a new tool that made the job a lot easier. It's like a long one-handled lopper. It extended my reach about 5 feet.

I still had to crawl under the bushes on the downhill side to be able to reach most of the branches. Here's what it looked like when I started:


Half of it was dead stuff that I had to clear out. The fire department will be happy.


Here's where I stopped. I cut about half of it out. I figure that I can do the other half next year after it's filled in a little.


Here's the before again from the top:


And the after:

It feels much better. The old looming branches were looking a little Grey Gardens.

The area that I cut is a little difficult to see in this photo from the street, but it's directly below the palm tree. I would like to have the bushes be much more compact and not cantilevering out over the street.


I also decided to clean up the bushes on the side yard. These grow so fast that it's hard to keep up with them. One day I would like to replace the fence that is slowly sagging into the neighbors yard. I think the bushes have contributed to the degradation of the fence. In strong winds they really whip back and forth and have managed to pull one of the fence posts out of its footing.


It's also covering my wall planters that are hanging from the fence.


It looks so different now. You can see more of the view and the whole yard feels more open.


One day I'll tackle the rest of it but I need to get on a ladder in my neighbor's yard to reach most of it. I might be easier to do once the old fence comes down.

Clearing the Hill

I started clearing the hill last week. It made me a little sad to do it while the grass was still green but I didn't want to leave it until the last minute like I usually do. It was also cool and breezy so it was a perfect time to pull out the weed whacker.



I also needed to clean up some of the trees above the house. I don't know what these are and I think they are pretty ugly but I'm stuck with them for the time being. Some of the branches bent over in our last wind storm and never stood back up so I cut them off.

Once I got started it was hard to stop. I ended up taking off all of the branches below about eight feet. It actually makes them look like trees rather than bushes and opens up the view a little.


One of the things that I don't like about these trees is that they send out new growth at the base of the trunk and then the inner trunks die.

It creates a gnarly candelabra of dead wood. Charming. I cut out all the dead trunks, some of which were 25 feet tall.


After the trees were taken care of you could see the path that leads the other side of the yard. Or, well, you could see where the path used to be. It was now almost totally blocked by the pomegranate bush at the top and jade plants on the bottom.


The pomegranate gets blooms in the spring but I've never seen any fruit on it. This thing would probably benefit from a severe pruning as well but I just don't have it in me right now. Maybe next year.


Now it actually looks like a path again. Kind of romantic.


For now, all it leads to is a giant half dead peach tree and a couple of citrus trees.

I'm hoping one day that I can build a little garden shed hidden under the pepper and walnut trees.

Some critters would prefer that side of the yard remain a secret. I uncovered this sleepy lizard as I was clearing out jade plants. It's much bigger than the Western Fence Lizards I usually see and has more distinctive markings. I'll try to figure out what it is.



I slowly made my way up the hill. The staircase I made last year was almost invisible. It was more like a tiered garden for grass and oxalis.


I tried to leave some of the oxalis because it looks cute when it's in bloom but it will be drying up soon.


The hill above the chicken coop is looking pretty spectacular right now.


I hate to mess it up but if I waited much longer it would have been 90 degrees when I went out to do it.

It looks so ugly now but I left the lupine bushes at the top. They've been getting bigger every year and seem to do better as they get more established. It makes me wonder what blue bonnets would do if I planted some.

Deb's Park

I live close to LA's second largest park, Deb's Park. The largest is Griffith Park which is hard to compete with. Most people have never heard of Deb's but it is definitely worth a visit, especially right now. Everything is green and growing.

Alex and I went about a month ago and saw this plant growing all over the place.

At the time it was pretty low to the ground and I had no idea what it was. It had thorns and very distinct white and green markings.

When we went back last weekend the plants were still there but they looked totally different. They are now 3 and 4 feet tall and made rather imposing prickley walls along the paths.

They are also starting to develop blooms that look like thistles.

some of the leaves are almost two feet long. Alex said that he thought that they are milk thistle and after doing some research when I got home he was proven right. It's also known as St. Mary's Thistle and is supposed to be good for the liver. When I mentioned it to my sister she knew all about it and it's therapeutic properties.

I would love to have some of this growing on my hill but it's considered invasive. I'm a little torn on the whole invasive issue. I would prefer to grow natives and drought tolerant plants but my hill is already covered with an invasive non-native grass. One thing that I like about the thistle is that it seems to crowd out the grass. Anywhere it is growing in Deb's Park there's no grass. Maybe it will turn into a thorny dry monster that I would have to cut down every year. I'll keep an eye on it in the park and see how it develops.


There was also this warty thistle that looked interesting but I couldn't identify it.



and another thistle that was neither warty nor milky but still very nice:


There were also large patches of this viney flower.

Neither of us knew what this one was.


Deb's Park is actually covered in non-natives. Here you can see a big clump of red castor bean against wild mustard.


Down below is the Audubon Center.


And above the Christian Science Senior Home is the array of solar panels they recently installed. Supposedly it cost a million dollars and will supply 90% of their electricity. It looks pretty cool.

More Than Just a Pretty Picture

I do think this is a pretty picture. I spent most of the day on the hill cutting the grass and pruning trees and bushes to get ready for fire season. It doesn't feel like fire season is right around the corner. We have rain in the forecast and it was a little brisk today, and of course we have a bunch of perfect clouds that look like I painted them there.

The fire department will start sending inspectors out at the beginning of may to check that we've cleared the brush. So even though everything is still green I'm trying to get a head start and not have to do everything the last weekend of April. So that explains what I was doing up on the hill but not why I took this picture. I take a lot of pictures of my valley because I can't get over how pretty it is. I could bore you with whole slide shows of puffy clouds against turquoise skies, wildflowers, Redtailed Hawks, orange purple sunsets and lost birthday balloons.

But that's not why I took the picture. Take a look below. Follow the red arrow. (click on image for higher resolution, it's worth it)

See that white speck? That's a goat. It's totally a goat, and you can't see the second one that was with it. They both were ambling along exploring the hill. No fence, no tether. They acted like they belonged there, and although I'm happy to agree with them it seemed a little strange that a couple goats were wandering around on the hill.

The reason that I'm so interested is because I'm totally goat crazy. I've been obsessing about getting a couple of milk goats. I've already drawn a little goat shed that will have an even better view than the chicken coop. I would need to fence off the top twenty feet of my property but then the chickens could run around too. It sounds like paradise.

So I got excited when I saw goats in the neighborhood. It would be nice if other people were already doing it so it wouldn't seem so strange when I get a couple of little dwarf Nigerians. Look how F-ing cute they are:


I sat and watched the goats for a while and eventually someone came out looking for them and chased them back down the hill. I'm thinking that maybe they escaped from a pen further down the hill. Maybe I'll go for a walk tomorrow and see if I can spot them.

Update 04/10/11:

Yep, goats. Alex and I walked over to spy on the goats. There were two does wandering on the hill and one billy tethered not far away. The billy was bleating and causing a bit of a ruckus but the does didn't seem to be bothered by us at all.

New Plants

I was driving down the street last week and found this aloe lying in the road. It was right next to someone's green bin on trash day so I figured that they were treating it like trash. I've seen enough Law and Order to know that once the trash is on the curb it's up for grabs so this went directly in my trunk.


It looks like it was a piece that broke off of a larger clump and laid on the ground for a few weeks before someone threw it out. The crown is flat and whitened and damaged from being upside down but the older leaves are thick and juicy and full of life.


I stripped of the bottom leaves to give me enough room to get the base to root.


I put it in a pot with another rescued plant that my friend Bill gave me for my birthday (thanks Bill). I love that kind of gift.

Aside from the older plant being red from the sun, it looks like these two could have grown up together. I love them. I think I'll move them to a shadier part of the yard for a while until the new plant gets used to the sun. I don't want that white top to get scalded.

I think that these are Aloe arborescens but I'll know more if they bloom next year.

Fox Tail Agave Update (4)

Here's the previous update that I didn't publish until recently.

Bloom stalks are now totally dry and brown. I've been putting up with them because I was hoping that bulbils would form that I could propagate.

A few did form at the tip and on the arch of the spike but not nearly as many as I was expecting. I've watched a couple other bloom spikes in the neighborhood over the past couple years and they had hundreds of bulbils crowding the whole length of the stalk. I don't know what I would have done with hundreds of agave attenuatas but I'm sure I would have figured something out.


The mother plants did get a fare number of new offsets growing from the trunk and I thought that these would just grow bigger and bigger until there was a large clump of mature rosettes at the end of the trunk, but when I started to pull off the dried leaves to give the new plants room to grow they started to fall off.


It turns out they aren't firmly attached and there were a few clumps that had already fallen to the ground.


This one had sent roots down and clearly wanted to stay where it was so I left it.


These are the rest that I collected. Each clump has ten to 30 little plants so I guess I got my hundred new fox tails after all.


Here they are potted up. They look a little small compared to the fast growing Agave desmenttiana but I'm sure they'll be bursting out soon. Then I'll need to figure out where to put them.