OccasionalPiece: Landscaping is All Finished -- 2014

On Tuesday, Bruno came to finish the construction of my raised vegetable garden bed. And I had a phone call with the cranky guy I'm allergic to, wherein he cussed me out, yelled "I'm off your job!" and hung up on me. Long day. That evening we got the two young men across the street, who are wrestling buddies, to help us move stones here and there, and finally we were both happy with how the path and layout looked.

Wednesday morning, with no cranky guy in sight, nine men plus the owner showed up to "put this job to bed." Here they are filling the garden bed with their special grow soil and are finishing up the stone.

Power shovel because our house is built on "cut," where they cut into an existing hill to create space for our house, and the whole thing is mostly decomposed granite. He parked his shovel here while they took lunch at about 10:45 a.m. and one of them said "cookies?" So I went inside and made a batch of snickerdoodles and took it out to them, along with jugs of ice water. I clear out upstairs so they can relax, and it sounded like a party on my back patio, with lots of laughing and joshing (in Spanish) going on. Most speak English, though.

The plants were laid out and top dressing (the darker brown soil) was brought in.

Planting the hill. We have over 70 plants on the hill. Cranky guy showed up to place them, so I ducked into the house. He's skilled and talented but we are allergic to each other (prone as I am to be allergic to cranky guys who criticize the plans, are constantly wanting to make changes yet are resistant to mine, who call me "Sweetie" and who cuss a lot). I think we have the entire truck fleet here, but the owner assures me we don't.

Leftover bits of rock, chipped off from the slabs of flagstone.

The fountain is up and running!! We have an "autofill" set-up where I never have to add water -- they ran a pipe that has an automatic shut-off valve. Bruno put lots of rock all around, but then had to uncover it a little because they had not run the drip lines yet.

Now they begin to run the drip lines. A PVC pipe is buried under the ground, emerging at midline of the drip system, so it can feed to both sides evenly. They lay the drip tubing out around the plants (guess there is no moving them now), then poke the pipe with a sharp nail and push in an emitter wherever there is a plant. The emitters drip about 2 gallons per hour. They put several on the trees and even run the tubing twice around those that need the most water.

This is where the day ended. The next morning only three men arrived first, and went to town making sure the back lawn area where the sod was going had adequate coverage with the sprinkler nozzles. A few more plants arrived: two peonies (bred for our climate) and two lilacs (the tag says: blooms are better after a cold winter. Looks like I'll be packing the roots with ice or something). I went off to run errands and when I came back, then sod had been laid in the back yard, covering the empty spot where we'd taken out the olive tree, and which had sat empty for about a year.

More drip irrigation work, a few plant changes, then a break for lunch (no cookies today -- only ice water).

The truck with the mulch arrived and everyone sprang into action. Three more men were on this truckfull of springy "woodland mulch." The one guy on the truck pitchforked it into trash cans, which others carried up the driveway and dumped in piles around the plants. They started in the back and moved toward the front. I asked Jesse how they got the mulch on the hill, and here he is demonstrating the "toss" method.

The mulch covers the drip lines.

Here are the two men who made it all happen: Bruno (l) and Jesse (r). Actually Jesse's real name is Jesus, and he often wore baseball caps that had slogans like "Come to Jesus," and "Jesus is the center of the universe." He has a great sense of humor, as well as two daughters who are going to Cal State San Bernardino. Bruno's daughter is studying to become a doctor. Both of them work for Paradise Garden Center full time, but keep extra jobs going on the weekends to keep their children in college. I took this at the end of the day, and everyone seemed really pleased with how the yard turned out.

Backyard path from brick patio to gate.

I took the following photos this morning, as everything looks so fresh and clean.

One of the plants on the hill is Cape Plumbago, which is a bush with clusters of icy-blue flowers. They are very popular around here.

Eventually a hedge will grow up and shield this side yard from the front. The hedge will run from the corner of the house and back around the raised garden bed, with a break at the walkway.