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Home Creationism

Our property straddles two different lots, which means our house is on one side while the extra land is on the other. Since it was meant to be two plots of land there was never anything created to facilitate getting from one side to the other. The only way was to walk outside, up a hill and into a gate on another road, which of course was stuck because of the over grown ivy.

So to get to the top of the hill where my citrus tree and cactus garden are, I have to use a chair to climb up a wall and walk on some loose soil to get to it. It was all overgrown of course as well as no one ever went up there -a few months ago I attacked the ivy and agave one afternoon and created a little "path" that I could walk on - so as we started to do more with the garden it seemed only sensible to build a proper path up.

At first i thought the whole operation was a necessary pain and had to be lived with. After the first few days I was really pleased with the crop of rocks we found, decided to preserve and began to see it as a piece of art.

However, when it wasn't finished when I thought it would, I started to feel it was the the work of a crazy man, passive aggressively trying to destroy our nice little sitting area to cause me personal psychic pain. After another weekend I started calling it the "Great Wall" likening it to the great wall of China, as it is debatable if it was a useful endeavor or not.

Finally this weekend the retaining wall is starting to look like one, and I can see that we needed it to hold up the hill so the soil doesn't continuously slide down onto the path we're going to make and I had a break through: people build walls all the time, in fact every house, garden and fence around here was built by someone, either for themselves or a contractor. In fact giant sky scrappers are being built all the time and not to mention giant reservoirs, damns and bridges are being built in China, one brick at a time mostly by hand and not with massive equipment that you find in the US and HK. So in the context of great architectural projects in this world, our wall seems just rather small and easy to make. So I am more than okay with what's going on in the house. yay!

it's still going to be a week or two of probably six before it's all finished. I thought I would share the work in progress...



As you can see in there is nothing just a little gate and a hill.



Here Pieter is attacking the ground and wall to build the first landing. So there is something to build steps up on



We then found a crop of rocks we wanted to preserve, so he poured the concrete around it.



Here is the pretty wall we made around the rocks, including our little alcove and sticks to evoke the South Western Adobe Style of the original settlers.



This is the retaining wall and path.



You can see here that now there is a landing to build some steps up to and I can walk and take things up and down the hill.

Yes, it all looks insane, but it will be very beautiful in the end.... (I hope!)

Home Creationism

In another life I worked as a divemaster, and part of the reasons I love cactus and succulents so much is because their shape generally reminds me of the reef. Last week I popped into the Californian Cactus Centerto get some brain coral and living stones, and while I was there I bought a bunch of succulents that looked like seaweed, a dead sea urchin, and polyps as well.



When I got home I made a separate small little "reef" garden away from the other more traditionally shaped cactus and succulents. Unfortunately the sand I put in mixed with the volcanic rock shifted after the first watering, but I still really like it and hope to make this section of the garden bigger as time goes on.

Home Creationism

Pieter and I was quite excited at seeing dragon flies mating (there are two of them if you look real close) and laying eggs in our pond.

Home Creationism

For our garden I am trying to use natural products as much as possible, and hopefully move to totally organic gardening once I finish all the fertilizer that I have already purchased. One of the things we decided to try was lady bugs. They are supposed to eat up all the pests in your garden while leaving no trace of poison. A few weeks ago we let out 3000 lady bugs in the garden, and watched the little critters crawl around a few days. Indeed they killed off all the problem white flies and other bugs we had and our garden was pretty healthy.

What they are supposed to do is lay eggs in the surrounding area and hatch thus creating a healthy eco system. I am not sure if it's worked as I haven't seen any eggs or baby bugs yet and the white flies are back. I am thinking that we don't have the right plants to foster them sticking around, and living in a really woody and wild area, they may have settled somewhere else. I really loved watching them for a few days, so once I start my butterfly garden, I am going to put more lady bug friendly plants in the area and try again.

Home Creationism

In late March I planted some Morning Glory Seeds in the ground, and by June they started blooming. These are the first flowers that I have ever grown from a seed. Below is the photo of the first two flowers.



Here is the plant is June, and now it's even larger, probably twice the size. The most we counted on a given morning was 20 flowers at once, since morning glory only opens in the morning and as the midday sun of Los Angeles starts to bare down they close up. Right now we're in the process of tearing down the fence, so the flowers look a bit ratty but there are pods growing and I have harvested the seeds. I replanted half of them in a pot, and kept the other half for the next year. I am also planning to make some "tutors" from the sticks of a tree we had to cut down as it died, and see if I can train the flowers to grow around them.