Yard Work

I've been tootling around in the yard a lot lately. I removed all the black widow hidey-hole cacti on the side of the house yesterday.
I recently found myself with $20, so off I went to Home Depot. Here's what I came up with today:

I set the last of my stones, then dug a shallow trench around them all. Next I poured decomposed granite in the trench. It has a nice golden sparkle to it. What's left of the mulch from last year is sun-bleached and sparse. A new layer of black mulch (in the skinny part of the yard) really jazzed it up a notch. Click here to see what it looked like last week.

The small space between the path and the corner river rocks was just screaming to be a flower bed. The front yard faces East and gets hours upon hours of direct sunlight. Plant requirements: low-lying, minimal-water, 6+ hours of sun. It was slim pickins. I bought stonecrop (perennial) and moss roses (annual.)

I used the rest of the mulch on the larger part of the yard- sort of made a flowerbed at the front around my rock rose sproutlings. I probably need three more bags to complete the yard. I'll need to get some edging to border the path so the granite doesn't wash away, and I need a few more river rocks to stop the erosion problem. All in all, it's really starting to come together.

Weird Plants Interest Me

When I was in high school I bought a giant vase and filled it with purple thistle I collected from the side of the highway and gave it to my mom on Mothers' Day. Another time I gave her a single spider mum, or what I had always thought was a spider mum. That picture is not as spindley as the thing I gave her.

Unique plants intrigue me.

Earlier this week I made a trip to the farmers' market. There was a nursery stand, where I purchased three small strawberry plants. When I was very small and my family moved into its first house, my parents bought me a few to plant in the front flower bed. Seven years later, when we moved again, the entire bed had been taken over by strawberries- my favorite fruit.

I've been fascinated with cacti for a while now. The scenic drive out to our aunt's house is lined with a beautiful blooming prickly pear variety which I have always enjoyed. As of late, I've been collecting dismembered cactus lobes and planting them along the side of my house.

Sitting on the table at the nursery stand there was a strange looking succulent, similar to a small cactus. It had one giant pod-like thing coming off of it- which I was told was a flower bud. I asked the lady what the plant was and she simply said it was a "carrion."

"Like meat?" I asked.
"yep."

Here is a picture of what it looked like on Tuesday:

On Wednesday, I took it out of the planter and put it in a (temporary) pot on my front porch. On Thursday it looked the same.

Friday, I was startled by what the plant looked like:
The flower is HUGE. It was also covered with flies. weird, weird, weird.I was so taken aback that I immediately came inside to google my new plant. This giant, hairy, striped, oddly fragranced fly attractor is a carrion flower. More specifically, the one I have is in the Stapelia family.

Carrion are unique in that they are not pollinated by bees or butterflies, they depend on flies. And they attract these flies by producing a foul odor- that of decaying meat... carrion. The flowers also have a sort of marbled, fleshy look to them.

WEIRD!

The odor of this particular one is not overwhelming- I hardly noticed it at first. However, I do not want flies gathering at my front door or to greet guests and have them say "What's that smell?" So I need to move my funky plant to a less prestigious location.

Now go look at the link above for the carrion flower and check out the photo of the Amorphophallus titanum in Wilhelma Botanical and Zoological Gardens in Stuttgart, Germany. Holy Magoo!

Day 55

Our lovely landscaped yard! Close to the front porch there's a red flowering plant, then a pink one. There's also a pink one on the other side of the steps. Close to where the steps meet the front walk, there's some yellow Lantana- a flower that butterflies love. In the middle of the yard there's a green shrub that those giant ants are eating. I called the saleslady so they can get rid of those little guys before they eat all the plants.

I just noticed that our house numbers are up. However, they haven't painted the post that they are mounted on. It's supposed to be forest green.

The water run-off has been laid- that's the strip of river rocks between each house.


Here you can see the fence posts. The fence will be straight from the neighbor's porch to the center post, then angle back from the center post to our front porch. That will add a little more privacy. My husband noticed that we have a doorbell. Funny, because none of the other houses have them. We asked about that in our initial meeting with the saleslady. Perhaps it's a new feature. Or maybe they only do them on the two-story plans.


On this side of the house we have three Red Yuccas. My daughter had really hoped we'd have some. The odd thing about Red Yucca is that the flowers are actually pink and the plant isn't really a member of the yucca family.

They had originally installed the under-stairs storage door where it opened into the archway. You couldn't open the door without smashing into it. They've removed the door frame. You can see the water heater. It's in a silly place. The space under the lower part of the stairs is also open for storage- the water heater interupts the free space. The tubes coming out of it run into the exterior wall. We think it would make more sense for it to be under the landing for the lower half of the stairs, allowing for more sensible storage space. I suppose they had their reasons.

Utility Room

Kitchen

Dining Room

The light fixtures have been installed. My husband hates them. Good thing he works in lighting...

He does have another major compaint. The fixtures and the door knobs are all silver, but the door hinges and the banister hardware is all gold. It doesn't match. The doors especially look bad. We'll have to add that to out list.

This is the phone jack in the kitchen. They either hung it crooked or cut the tile unevenly. It's already on our repair list.

This is the master bathroom sink. I don't care about the saw dust in the sink. The problem here is the big blue chip on the right. This has also been added to our repair list.
Here is the view from the back. We have a large shrub to the left of the driveway, and a tree on the right.
I took another one from further back because the display screen on my camera is acting up. I wanted to be sure I got all of the plant-life. You can also see the street light.

The saleslady let me know we'll have two walk-throughs before we move in. I don't know if we have them before or after closing. On the first walk-through, we'll have a an independent inspector person walk with us and they'll make a list of all the things we want fixed. Then they'll give the list to the builder's team who will correct the issues. Finally, we'll have the second walk-through to be sure everything is perfect before we move in. As of right now, closing is set for July 10 (Day 68.)

Day 54: Lots of Installations

My husband went out to the house today, then back again this evening. He took the pictures with his phone, so the ones in poorly lit parts of the house are kind of blurry. You can still click on them to enlarge.

Utility Room, shelves installed

Powder Room, mirror, toilet and sink installed

Kitchen (tile being installed)
Microwave mounted
Dining, tiled, with upstairs closet doors leaning on wall

Girls' Bathroom, mirror, sink and toilet installed

Master Walk-In Closet, racks installed, but missing shelves

Master Bathroom, counter top, sink and mirror installed

He came back in the evening. They've done our landscaping,
laid out the grass, and put up fence posts.
The day the front steps were laid, they also did the back side walk and poured the driveway.