Roswell Adventures

Believe it or not, most neighborhoods are not used to seeing gardens in front yards...especially gardens planted in straw bales. Since we want to be good neighbors (and I will be honest - we are so done with coming in from watering with a couple dozen goats heads stuck in our shoes) we decided we should spruce things up a bit.   Our front bales are planted with a variety of squash and beans. The ground between those bales, however, are filled with gravel and goats heads - vile weeds that bear seeds with thorns that are happiest when they dig deep into your flesh. After we have stepped between the bales to water, we sound like we are walking with golf cleats on, and we have to stop and pull those nasty seeds out before coming inside, lest we find them later with our bare feet. Something needed to be done!   The goats heads in this area have not started growing much yet, but with the water running off the bales, they soon will be. Enough is enough! ...

Texas rangers, salvia, and petunia basket   Hesperaloe, yellow hesperaloe, salvia, globe mallow, and a bit of our pinon pine - our Christmas tree. This is our xeriscape garden.   Our asparagus patch with wine bottle edging. Ignore the grass around it...it will be going away.   Volunteer verbena. This guys can stay!   Butterfly bush with rosemary in the background. A year ago this front porch area was a patch of hard-packed dirt/clay. We will be planting flowers in those pots.   We picked up this geranium and the white flowers (whatever they are) when we stopped at our favorite nursery in Ruidoso Downs. After we planted it and placed the pot near the front door, I stepped back and fell in love with it.   Chuck has long talked about wanting a fuschia...so we thought we'd give it a try on our front porch, which gets morning sun and afternoon shade. So far so good!   And these are the seedlings yet to be planted in the b...

Our planting into our bales was twice delayed - once due to the RMACAC Conference (which we wouldn't have missed for the world) and the second time due to ridiculous winds earlier this week. However, this afternoon was gorgeous, so we decided to dig in! We started by putting our seedlings into groups - squash (we decided that trying to keep them separated into different types would drive us crazy), beans (divided into pole, bush, and dry), one "those not ready to transplant". At this point we were on a roll, and I totally forgot to grab my camera to document things! Next we consulted the diagrams we'd made when planting and decided we'd follow that...kinda sorta. It seems I started a few more squash plants than we probably need (shhhh...don't tell the neighbors!) so we needed to adjust a bit. However, our chart was more of a guideline anyway, so we set the plants out where we wanted them. Next our tools - a trowel and a bucket of soil (of which we used a...