Your blogger is sore all over today, after a hard day's work in the yard yesterday. We started off by a trip to Kniffing's Nursery – the most beautiful nursery we've seen in San Diego County. We're kicking ourselves for not having found it sooner! Not only is it a beautiful place to visit, but the people there are friendly and knowledgable; it felt like being home. We met Ted Kniffing (the owner), his wife Eva (who helped us find what we were looking for), Hugo (he with the big muscles and the ability to manhandle 300 lb trees with little apparent effort), and Dawn (who was full of great ideas).
Our morning trip had an actual plan: we wanted a Palo Verde tree. We'd picked the Palo Verde because of it's drought-tolerance, beautiful flowers, year-round green, and (perhaps most importantly) it's “twigginess” – for this tree was destined for a place near our bird feeders, where we have a dearth of nearby perches for the hummingbirds, orioles, goldfinches, grosbeaks, and house finches that all habitually perch before visiting the feeders.
At Kniffings, Eva walked us around to see the various sizes and varieties of Palo Verdes they had in stock, but it was clear from her discussion that the variety “Desert Museum” was, in her opinion, the one to get. We thought it was more attractive than the others, so we took her advice and bought one in a 24” square wooden container. Hugo helped us load it up into my pickup, and away back home we went. When I backed my truck into the place we were going to plant it, and raised the tree to the vertical, the birds were perching in it within 60 seconds – win! Our friend and neighbor Jim helped me unload it; I dug the hole (about 12 cubic feet of wet dirt), and plop – in it went! One beautiful Palo Verde tree. We like it so much, we've decided to bracket the first one with two more...
I spent the next six hours or so whacking weeds on about a half-acre of ground. I used the hand-carried Husqvarna with a steel blade to get the mustard plants below ground level. It's a lot of work, but puts a real dent in the mustard's level of enthusiasm. We also got ready to pull our out-of-control pampas grass by using the whacker to chop off all the blades. This made about a cubic yard of debris – what a mess! Also, using the whacker at head height was a lot of work; my arms are feeling it this morning.
After that we took another trip out to Kniffings, and picked up seven beautiful salvias for Debbie to pot and display (she's doing that today). Then it was off to Wal-Mart to pick up 25 bags of large pine bark (they have very nice quality pine bark at a very reasonable price – over 1/3 less than the going price at the nurseries). We were up near Alpine, and it was 5:30 pm, so we ran up to Descanso Junction restaurant and had a splendid meal of grilled mahi-mahi. Then back home and spread all 25 bags of pine bark over a big bed that Debbie had cleared while I was weed-whacking. Today Debbie is putting those salvias on display in the bed, in elevated pots. They should show very nicely against the pine bark.
Whew – what a day! Today I'm in my little home office, working on software. Sitting, for once, feels very good...
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