Southwest Gardening Blog

I received some wonderful info on planting Mark from the wonderful landscaper that writes this blog. Beautiful photos of southwest gardens and great info... take a visit at WATER WHEN DRY

Meet Mark

This is MARK!

Well, the little pictures are of the baby tree. The other pictures with flowers are what *Mark* will grow into!


Mark is a Cercidium hybrid ‘Desert Museum’ This semi-evergreen, Thornless, Palo Verde hybrid exhibits qualities found in
Foothill, Blue and Mexican Palo Verde, provides ample shade, distinctive rich green trunks and branches that, similar
to the Palo Brea, remain smooth as they mature, and abundant brilliant yellow flowers that appear in spring and intermittently
during the summer months.

And this is how he got his name:

In the late 1970's Mark Dimmitt with the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum (ASDM) began noticing Blue Palo Verdes that exhibited characteristics suggesting they were hybrids of other Palo Verde species. He collected and planted seeds from the assorted trees he had observed and began evaluating them. By 1981 he had identified a thornless seedling as clearly superior to the others collected. Careful evaluation of the genetic composition of this hybrid, named 'Desert
Museum', revealed it to be a complex hybrid having genetic characteristics from Mexican, Blue and Foothill Palo Verde.

This information came from Arid Zone Trees

I have never planted a tree before and Joe has only planted one a long time ago and a very different kind of tree.

Well, if you know me and know how I can research ANYTHING to death....Well, I can. It took a month or more for us to figure out what to plant. We wanted something light and airy, preferably flowering but not to messy. Not over 15-20ft high. Interesting branch structure and native to the desert. We had considered other Palo Verde Trees and although we both liked them they are normally VERY THORNY !!!! Bed idea if you ever want to touch or prune it.

We were wandering through the nursery the other day and Joe says....*How about this?* and poof Mark has a new home...

We will plant him as soon as the finishing touches of the fountain are done!

I am soooooo easily entertained these days! ;-)

Enjoying our Summer and our projects

Well, hello again..... Here it is the end of August and I thought I would catch you up with how we have been filling the past few weeks outside of our day to day stuff we all do.

We certainly have been enjoying the pool this year, especially with Joe's new schedule. His working so close to home has been wonderful for us both. He can spend more time in the morning before work, come home for lunch and a jump in the pool, back to the office for afternoon appointments and home for the evening..

We had a couple of medical appt's and all went well including Joe's rotorooter exam. HEY, it's only fair he gets poked and prodded too! Ewwwwwwww, I know, I know. I couldn't help it.

My mom, Mary, came to visit for a week. It was great having her here for several days and she enjoyed the new guest room. I have a few more decorating things left to do but will post photo's for you soon.

While she was here we went to a wonderful restaurant we have found a couple of miles from the hospital in Redlands. Called Farm Artisan Foods . It's a great little place in an old downtown environment. It is a chef owned restaurant with innovative/california/gourmet cuisine. Most of their foods come from local organic farms and dairy's. They even buy their meat from a local butcher that purchases 4-H animals that have been certified as organically raised. We can't remember we when we had a better pork loin than here.

They offer a prix fix *lunch* that is served from 11:30-4:30 that consists of a choice of appetizer, entree and desert for $19.50. It is a real deal. The same meal at dinner could easily be $45.00.

Even their coffee is roasted locally just for them. Served in individual french presses with your desert of caramel creme and handmade chocolate truffles.... hmmmmmmmmmmm... If you are local. Go there!

We have also been working on the garden and fountain projects. Some of our garden is doing well some not so good. The aphids really got a hold of my squash....and there were lots of ants...Did you know that the ants and aphids have a relationship going on? Apparently the ants like the sticky substance left by the aphids so they will carry the eggs to the leaves of the plants so they can multiply and make the stuff for them much to the demise of my plant and ME! Joe also adds that the ants will actually HERD them and MILK them.... who knew... (Joe!)

The fountain is coming along. The mosaic is taking a while mostly because I don't get started to early as most of you know and it is so hot lately then I am tired in the evening when it cools down.....trying to get in an hour or two when it isn't blazing out here is tough. We are making progress though. I am ALMOST finished with the tile. Next step is plumbing the fountain, grout, sealant, then WATER! I can't wait to see it finished.

I also really need to decide on a tree for the area. We want to plant it this fall so I better get going on that...

Joey is doing well in his job and apartment. He likes both and is happy to be living close to the beach. He and his friends have been spending as much time as they can there. Bonfires and everything... I plan on having a Mom and Son beach day with him next week. He is getting ready for school to start on soon. I am so very proud of him. He is really growing up and getting down to business while having some fun in the process.

BBQ Area

Since I am showing you garden pics....This is the BBQ Area. My Brother, Doug built that beautiful BBQ for us out of tiles we had made in Rosarita. We shopped for them with my Dad when he lived down there. It is a great memory. He picked out the mural above the BBQ.

Courtyard/Fountain project

This is another current project. This is an area outside of our master bedroom that is a lovely area but we had been neglecting a bit and decided it was time to do something about it.

First step was to get the patio overhang painted and Joe installed Sun Shade Screens over portions of the top. We ripped out the old fountain that some workers in the yard had broken a couple of years ago and searched and ordered the new one you see pictured online. they are staining it to order and shipping it FREE from Ill. Can't beat that! You can find Henri Studios here. Then Joe resealed the fountain basin getting it ready to hold water better than it was and prepare it for new tile.

Next we cleaned out the rock in the mid section where an old tree was and a new tree needs to go...Well, we didn't actually do that but Jose did.....We are currently researching what kind of tree we want in there...It is more difficult than you would think! Oh, our pug, Aldo who is blind did have to learn about the new hole the hard way! Luckily he is tough and shook it off and jumped out!

Next was to figure out our theme for the mosaic in the fountain and I laid that out as you can see and we are still in the process of finishing that.

Joe is going to redo the walkway between the guest room and ours with flagstone and I am going to redo the cactus/succulent garden...

A few bird feeders, wind chimes and a nice place to sit and enjoy and we will be done!

Watch for pics to follow..............................

Test 2 garden collage

How do you like all this? .... It'll have to do for now.

This is one thing that has been keeping me/us busy. I had tried a veggie garden in this spot years ago and just when things started to grow and I had everything on a timed water system we went on a trip somewhere....(as we USED to do...LOL) and when we came back....Guess what? No water/No plants....

So this year when my lovely next door neighbor offered to rototill my very hard dirt into nice soil to plant in I jumped with joy, started making plans and ran off to the garden center for *stuff*.

My friend Michelle suggested I try a seed catalog she has been using www.territorialseed.com It has been a wonderful resource and I was able to order some seeds for things like peas and spinach that are heat resistant. Joe put up a trellis on the stucco wall for the peas. Right now we have tomatoes, a watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumber, yellow and green zucchini, strawberries, 7 kinds of herbs and baby pea plants. I have just added some chard, carrots, spinach and beets and lettuce will follow soon.

I have also been getting advice from a site called www.davesgarden.com

The pictures of the bugs were something I obsessed over for awhile until I finally identified them on www.whatsthatbug.com Turned out to be harmless.

I also know that after transplant it is a BIG NO NO to do any gardening. It's on the top of the DON'T DO THIS list. So I figure... What better way to get a call for a new liver than to start something like a garden that I can't touch if my turn comes up!

So this is summer project #1

and then there was Thursday

Thursday I learned that these lovely creatures, Tent Caterpillars, were eating and killing all of our Italian Cypresses and pine trees. We have a LOT of very tall Italian Cypress trees surrounding our property and we would hate to lose them especially to a furry insect.

A very nice guy who specializes in this sort of thing had been inspecting the property behind us where the owner was complaining about the plethora of these. We had noticed an over abundance of these this year as well. I was just worried about all the moths that would be sure to follow and had no idea they ate trees and had settled in ours!

We did have one extra large tree that we saw was dying and thought it wasn't getting any water to it and had been giving it extra water but apparently that isn't the problem.

The nice bug man's solution. One of them is to spray the trees to the tune of a nifty thousand dollars.....YIKES! Wasn't exactly in the monthly budget this month.

He had a couple of other suggestions and we are going to get an arborist to come out and give us a second opinion....I will let you know....But watch those caterpillars. If you have them in your area and have pine or cypress trees he said you should spray them every February as a preventative measure. I will look up the name of the stuff. Ortho makes it.