The Garden, part 2

First of all, the garden is still a work in progress.  Truth to tell, it probably always will be a work in progress.  Consider this posting, then, a progress update.

As you can tell from the "before"  shots, the task of carving out a garden was formidable, so I am happy with what we have been able to accomplish in the past nine months.  Here is how the garden looked a week ago when I took camera in hand out back.

First of all, the path to the garden.  The purpose of this little preliminary garden was to block the view of the septic system from our casita in back of the house, where we frequently sit in the evenings and entertain friends.  From this angle, you can see the exposed parts of the septic system, but it is obscured from view from the house by the plantings and the rock walls.  The oleanders are still small, as they were grown from seed that I gathered in January, 2009, soon after we arrived.  I planted 24 seeds and now have 20 oleander "yearlings"!

A delivery truck deposited four yards of crushed granite at the end of the driveway, which was then conveyed, one wheelbarrow at a time, to create the path down to the garden.

The plan is eventually to have the area around the path (outside the fence) planted with native plants and grasses that deer do not find palatable.  So far, they have not nibbled on any of these plantings.  I see the telltale cloven hoof footprints around these plants often in the mornings, but have not noticed that any of the plants were bothered.

I guess it was not really necessary to have a sign that says "Garden"  at the entrance, but I couldn't resist the metal sign when I spotted it in a local store.

This is the first raised bed I constructed, the one you can see in the bleak "before"  picture in the previous post.  The prolific plant in the foreground is anise hyssop, something we particularly enjoyed in Connecticut.  We'll see if it can survive a Hill Country summer!  This bed had lettuce, spinach, arugula, and beets all winter--which we enjoyed until the weather turned warm and these cool-weather plants all bolted.  It also has oregano, marjoram, dill, basil, and tarragon.  The tree to the back is a peach.

The mint is planted outside the raised beds so that it does not take over the garden.  These are the plants that provided the crucial ingredient for our Kentucky Derby party.

On the far side of the garden is a bed for blackberries.  Since the blackberry plants came from a mail order nursery, they were small and looked rather lost in this bed, so I decided in this first year to make the bed into a blackberry-shallot bed.  I have never before raised shallots, and I had no idea how they would fare.  As you can see, we will have in a short while a bountiful harvest of shallots!  The tree in the foreground is a nectarine, also from a mail order nursery, planted bare root in February.  The tree in the rear is an apricot.

This is a picture of the same bed from the other direction.  We love hibiscus, but so do the deer!  These hibiscus plants are safe, and the deer can only look and salivate.

This is a shot of the front of the garden.  Noreen wanted to have flowers as well as vegetables, so this raised bed is given over to two climbing roses, an autumn-blooming clematis (clematis paniculata), and assorted other flowers.

This is the bed with peppers, tomatoes, purple basil, and green beans.

I was lucky enough to find a peach tree locally last fall just after the fence was erected, so the peach was planted in October.  There are far too many peaches for a tree of this size, so to protect the slender branches, I have culled several peaches, much as it hurt me to do so.

This little sign--a gift from Brian and his family--is displayed prominently at the entrance to the garden.  A reminder, indeed, that "gardening tills the soul."