Hi Rhodium! I got your email, but I decided to correspond with you, instead on the forum. I've been pressed upon quite heavily in the week leading up to Hanukkah. Everyone wants their projects completed before the holiday season. The red-twigs in the photo have already experienced fall leave drop, so they are not as noticeable. The red-color in the sericea is not quite as dramatic as the on-line nursery marketing photos would lead you on to believe. The color is of a tone that is in tune with the season and other plants that darken during the lower lighting of winter. Actually unless you know about the nature of these plants, most people don't notice them at all. Everyday the color seems to change, so I enjoy finding out what is the new color of the day. The hose is not a pathway, just for watering the establishing plant material, which today is under a blanket of snow fall. A pathway will be installed leading to a small arbor seating area off to the left, between the redbuds. The fence is built half-way up the slope and curvilinear to aid in establishing a focal point half-way up the slope. The break in the plant material, rhodies on the botton and Red-twig up slope combined with the fence are designed to create an artificial horizon to keep the eye in the grotto area. It'll take a few years to grow in, but time is on my side.

I'm sure your neighbors were happy to see veggies, even bolting crops, over the weedy yard, Spaghetina. Here's a couple of suggestions I have from my time growing organically up in SF and Marin. 1) Most of those flowers of the bolted veggies are edible and tasty. While the leaf flavor has turned bitter through the winter and the taste change that comes with bolting, the blossoms often gain a very interesting taste that is great topping salads or lightly fried in certain dishes. 2) If like germinating your own crops from seed, remember which of your crops are heirloom (their seeds will usually produce true) and which are F1 or other hybrids -- it's seed is typically still viable, but may have very different characteristics than the parent. The GW seed exchange forum is a great way to get those exotic seeds you mentioned w/o having to pay catalog prices or drive all over the Bay area, but you need your own seeds to reciprocate. Some of the best plants & veggies in my yard are from trades I've made with other GW members. 3) To my way of thinking, your soil mix seems too heavily focused on decomposed organic matter and doesn't take advantage of the alkaline SF clay topsoil and it's associated soil flora. The compost/purchased soil is great for nitrogen and drainage and you can artificially pump up the P/K/Fe to grow good veggies & plants in it, but organic amendments like blood & bone meal, fish emulsion, seaweed and others need bacteria & fungi to free the nutrients for your crop's roots. That's generally not true for soluble inorganic amendments, which is why they are popular. There's definitely a risk of adding weed seeds by using your yard's topsoil in the garden beds, but that soil food web is necessary for growing good organic crops, IMO. For plants that need lots of N and like great drainage, I go 2/3 purchased soil/fully composted organic matter and 1/3 native topsoil. For tomatoes, peppers and others that suffer in N-rich soils, I use 2/3 native, 1/3 organic matter.

I wanted to post today, but my deck is completely stripped of paint because its being repainted. I dont think the deck is going to end up getting painted until at least Monday because all the rain we got here delayed the whole project a week. I think what I will do is post pics of the plants in my front yard, and then save the backyard for when the deck is painted (probably Tuesday or maybe very very early Wednesday morning (like 5:30 am!). I'll post my Front yard today and the rest as soon as they are back in their spots! -Alex

Ooooooooooooo...so much potential! :-) It will be a lot of work, but think how beautiful it's going to be when your done. The space you have to work with looks great, almost like your landscaping spaces are already set for you! I did lasagna beds for the first time and I'm loving that! I'm extending four beds using the method and I created planting space around a pole with it also. I plopped plants right in the two finished L-beds right after making them and they all seem happy. FYI, on the "gushy" parts of your yard: Joe-Pye Weed seems to love the moisture and I get a bunch of it in bloom in the late summer-- beautiful, unreal mauvish-purplish color with dark maroon stems. And Lobelia Inflata is supposed to like a lot of moisture too. Best wishes on your labors :-)