Jill Doughtie

North side of the front yard (View larger)

Here’s what the north half of the front yard looks like right now. The yard slopes down toward the sidewalk, I used the ground up palm tree root and soil to make berms to try to stop runnoff water. One runs along the sidewalk, and another one is about five feet up from the sidewalk. Then I mulched over the berms and the bare dirt — and about ten square feet of grass that I thought I’d just try covering instead of digging out.

South side of the front yard (View larger)

On the south side of the yard, I stopped pulling up grass entirely and just mulched right over it. When I did that in the back yard with a thick carpet of pine needles, most of the grass died. This is pear tree mulch — I don’t know if the pine needles were a special part of killing the grass so easily last time, or whether any mulch will do. I want to avoid buying and using plastic, and I don’t have lots of newspaper or cardboard handy to layer below the mulch, so I’m giving plain mulch a go.

These are the berms I made out of palm tree root and soil. They’re about half mulched over — mulching is on hold right now because of the brush fire up in La Canada and all of the smoke in the air.

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We were exploring the Arroyo near the Aquatic Center, and I saw this scrap concrete used to make terraces and borders. I want to do something like this in my garden.

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Last week I got super local, super fresh grapefruit through VeggieTrader, a website to help people to trade homegrown produce.  The person offering them let us pick them from the tree ourselves.

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One of the red rib dandelion-like chicories in the back yard is blooming.

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The back yard tree is covered in baby avocados.

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One of the Cinderella pumpkins started out growing upside down. I left it that way for a long time, and it grew flat and thin, like a pancake.

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I have a Lebanese light green summer squash growing, which I should probably pick and eat . . .

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. . . and one little Japanese eggplant.

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The stump grinder is on vacation this week.

We’re having the palm tree in our front yard removed.

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The city is also going to cut down the Eugenias in our parkway strip soon. Then the Deodar Cedar will be the focal point of the yard.

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I’ve been loosing up the sod and pulling it out with a cultivator and my hands (with gloves on). When I dig deeper, I inevitably kill earthworms, and I don’t like that. Besides, they say that grass uses more water than any other commonly grown garden plant. I’m not digging deeply enough to get out all of the rhizomes, but if I stop running the sprinklers and water much less frequently, won’t the roots and rhizomes die eventually?

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I’ve been finding lots of pill bugs. I used to think pill bugs and sow bugs were two names for the same thing, but according to Insects of the Los Angeles Basin, sow bugs are bigger and they can’t roll themselves into balls.

I’ve also been finding lots of light red/orange spiders under the sod with the pill bugs, which, also according to Insects of the Los Angeles Basin, are called Sow Bug Killers (because they eat sow bugs and pill bugs).

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Our arborist gave us a big truckload of pear tree mulch on Friday. I’ve been slowly spreading it out on the de-sodded areas.