Removing an Eye Sore: Adios Pool Fence

When we bought the house in 2001, our sons were small and we had a lot of little kids running around the yard. So, we installed a pool fence.

I've hated the pool fence from the day it was installed. I felt it was ruining my fun, cramping my style and giving me eye-bleeds. I was obsessed with hating it, I admit.

This year our sons are respectively 25 and 18 and it occurred to me that they are adults. Adults who can be trusted to walk across the yard without accidentally dropping headfirst into the pool.

You know when you don't have a headache, or you don't have the flu, you take it for granted. Only when you get that headache and you get that flu do you realize how well you had it before: when you felt good, when you were gloriously healthy. An eyesore feels a bit like that. You can't stand it when it's there. You obsess (ok maybe you don't, congratulations for being such a level-headed, mature individual), you think that when it will be gone you'll be deliriously happy.

But you don't. Instead you take brief note of the improvement and go on with your life.

Still, I'm pretty glad that my garden is no longer an annex of Alcatraz.

Before: (not exactly the same angles, so shoot me)



After:



Before:



After:



Before: (note the new bed, ready for planting)



After:



Here is lunch and dinner by the way. It's August and we can't pick vegetables fast enough.

Vegetable Garden: What Have We Done?!

Update from the vegetable garden. Still no drip system, but I don't care. Why did I ever think we needed one? It's march and cool out. I have conveniently forgotten that in the Valley (as in Los Angeles San Fernando Valley) summer temperature can reach over 110 degrees. But a mild form of amnesia compounded with winter lethargy has replaced my initial energy. I do better with super physical jobs than tedious ones where I have to learn something.

Planting all veggies at once, damning caution and restraint to the wind.

Meanwhile, the vegetables (and my husband), unlike me, got the memo: Spring has sprung.

 premature tomatoisation.

Carrot seedlings, ponions and asparagus in the back. Or as we say in French "n'importe quoi"

Vegetable mashup 

Here you can see our technique: vegetables are planted without rhyme or reason and with no concern whatsoever for size at maturity or the fact that the beds are too deep to be reached in the center.

Peas so tender and cute

Me, possibly still in denial but starting to realize that things are growing fast and are planted too closely. 

Also, that I better get my s%#t together re: the drip system.

To Drip or Not to Drip: That Is the Question.

Planting a vegetable garden in a desert without using water (or very little of it).

That was the challenge.  My husband and I felt differently about it.  He figured that it's okay to use water if it's for growing food. I wanted to prove to the world and to myself that growing food could conserve water. So, I created a very accurate drip system.

But I did not created it fast enough! While I was busy procrastinating learning about how to install a drip system in vegetable beds with odd shapes and no angles, my husband was busy planting.

The cat, demonstrating the art of relaxation also known as cat butter.

View from above. The vegetables are coming out but the drip system is still only happening in my imagination.

An interesting things happened. As soon as we disconnected the sprinkler system, the bougainvillea began to explode. Today it goes well above the roof.

The Bougainvillea keeps on giving

Gone With the Lawn

DWP is offering us an offer I can't resist. They're paying us. Paying us! to remove our lawn and replace it with a drought tolerant landscape.  How much will they pay? A whooping $3.75 per square foot of lawn removed. Please pardon the delay as I rub my eyes and pinch myself. That's square foot, not square yard!

Joe and I measured and it seems that between our back lawn and the grass on the parking strip we have about 1,500 square feet of lawn. Actually more than that, but we badly want vegetable beds and those cannot be included in the financial incentive.

So we made our design, measured a million times, calculated, measured some more, cursed, pouted, tried again and found out that once we remove the surface that the raised beds would occupy, it comes to 1142 square feet.

Once the landscaping is complete (now that the project was approved by DWP we need to complete it by mid May) DWP will reimburse us $1142 x $3.75 = $5572.5

Ploc.

That was the sound of me fainting.

No, this is not an alien's design to take over the Earth one crop circle at a time. It's my hideous, not to scale design. 

Basically, the idea is to remove the lawn and the existing water-siphoning sprinkler system, replace those with a drought tolerant landscape mighty enough to thrive in our Southern California climate (add to this the gift of a super arid microclimate in our town) and a drip system, and finance all this with the DWP incentive.

You can see above that we are removing a total of 1810 square feet of lawn, but we are deducting a 344 square feet area (the circle above) to create raised beds. In those raise beds we'll plant a permaculture style (more on that later) vegetable crop.

I found this circle/medicine wheel design on Pinterest and fell in love.  I wish I could give proper credit to the people who made this garden, but I could not find it anywhere. If you know, please email me.

You know what it's like. Fall in love first, think later. The decision is made. So let's go! 

Here is the before, so that you know what we're starting with. These pictures were taken in the middle of winter, so the summer grass had died in patches. It's pretty bad I admit.  In the background, you can see a few Echium, Euphorbia, and Phormium. Clearly, when given just the right amount of neglect, drought loving plants love it here.

Lawn, I will not be missing you.