What a beautiful yard. Our garden project this year was to take a bare spot in the yard and do something different with it. Here’s the before and after:
is the before…and
Is the after. We’re really happy with it. (But we didn’t do it ourselves…)
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That looks great! It’s always rewarding to see the final product.
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That’s a nice looking (and apparently huge) yard!! Once again, the dark mulch adds a nice contrast to the lawn. Of course, it never hurts to have one with leaf-off and the other with leaf-on!
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It is a big yard, and for the first 15 years that we lived here, we had the attitude of @eric - weeds are pretty too.
We still don’t mulch our front yard, and I enjoy the weeds, but over the last 10 years our attitudes toward the yard have changed and now we do spend time and money taking care of it.
I grow cannabis too, which is legal to do in Massachusetts. I’m still a bit shy about that, but it’s a good plant to grow as it requires some effort but yields a big payoff - sort of like tomatoes.
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Looks great but so different to what I have here!
We are in the middle of a cold snap on the east coast of Australia, after a ridiculously wet start to the year (over 2 metres of rain already!) , so a week ago I put new drainage in along the boggy side of the house. I have a lot of clay around so I needed to be able to dig before it hardened and dried out! Took me 4 days because it was also the week I had a cold.
I use sugar cane mulch here, because I can buy it from local cane farmers and it’s reasonably cheap. I also use a lot of leaf drop which is similar to what the dry rainforest does in national parks surrounding my region, I’ll prune something and let it drop so the organic matter will go back into the soil.
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That looks like a lot of work as well! Your work is looking really nice!
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Ooh. An excuse for me to post some photos… Most relevant, in @bostrav59’s context:
None of those plants are weeds, and the animal didn’t smell at all. He’s looking wary because he was apparently standing next to his wife, but he is looking at me so I wasn’t worried - it’s when they turn their back to you that you have to duck’n’cover.
I like tomatoes but we end up giving most of them away; all fruit works well with me, bolus but no unexpected highs or lows. They’re fun to grow, except last year where our local supplier of growing medium gave us a couple of yards with no nitrogen in it, took a while and a test kit to work that out. These guys are getting slapdash - their major purchasers are, indeed, growing skunk.
Pretty much every one of those is a different variety. Indeed the thing in the middle is a pepper:
Here’s another way of doing it. Tomato torture:
But the advantage is that the local deer, who should realize they only get food OUT FRONT, can’t get the tomatoes even if they break in. Oh, there aren’t any weeds in the lawn either, honest.
Last picture, because we had lots of bees early on then the freeze apparently killed them all. We’re still low in the honey bee department but others are around:
All those were taken with my “new” (used) AndroidAPS phone. Most of the time I run for my “real” camera and lose the shot trying to get the right lens on. The nice thing about AndroidAPS (and, I guess, the like) is that the phone is perma-glued to my body and the camera is relatively easy to activate now I’ve worked out the different UI from my last phone. I couldn’t possibly have got the skunk shot (ok, it isn’t that good, but I got it) if I had to run back to the house to grab my mirrorless.
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That’s a lot of digging, particularly thru wet clay soil!! I’ve done similarly at a few houses we’ve lived in (I was military and moved a lot), but water drainage is essential around a house. I appreciate your efforts!
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My wife (master Gardner program for our county) put in Shishito peppers last year. Four plants gave us more than we could handle! I think we harvested like every other day because they were so prolific. We gave bags of them away to neighbors and friends and still have some in our freezer! She also tried to grow some “Uncle Joe” tomato’s, supposedly an heirloom local variety, I think the seed lot was bad…worst looking tomato’s I’ve ever seen and inedible!
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Hey gardeners! Maybe you all can suggest something for me.
I’m looking for a gift idea for someone who likes plants. Except they live in an apartment, so all their plants are the indoor potted type.
What would you suggest?
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If they have cats, nothing. 
We had potted plants on apartments in the past with cats and they either a) destroyed them or b) ate them and threw up all over the place all the time. Fake plants ftw if you have cats!!!
If no cats, I always like the ferns are beautiful.
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Jade plants are indestructible and cats don’t like to eat them.
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Any suggestion I would make would be based on the amount of natural light they have in their apartment @Eric, or what level of care would suit the person.
If they have a wonderfully bright space and the room, I’d suggest an alocasia zebrina. Mine sits in my bay window and the leaves follow the sun (I can also grow these outside, but I’m in the subtropics).
However, if the light is lacking then I’d suggest something like a maidenhair fern, or perhaps another understorey fern species. Another idea for low light and also low maintenance is a zamioculcas. Or perhaps a dracaena trifasciata.
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