Life of Wry

Our front yard was a sight to behold this Spring. It was a bit of a messy mess, but it was colorful and just packed with wall-to-wall flowers. Our irrigation’s been off for nearly a year because of the remodel, and we knew we were going to re-landscape the front and back, so just let things happen. And things were magnificent:

So, starting last weekend, Ruben got to work.

This is Ruben. He’d just finished removing– besides dense flora and flowers–a recalcitrant motilija poppy bush, a bunch of aged nandina and a very stubborn redbud, and was about to move on to the pluot tree at right (loaded with pluots).

This weekend, he brought his brother and son. And a rototiller. And they removed the last of everything.

And this is now.

The boulder wall was not even visible before.

Then they dissembled the path and will use the stones elsewhere in the front and back yards.

We now have a tabula rasa.

It’s a bit shocking. Our yard’s been though numerous iterations in our 24 years (this month) on A Street.  We’ve had prolific vegetable and herb gardens and a wide array of flowers over the years. We’ve had lemons, loquats, peaches and almonds. We had a charming fence (thanks, Jim!) with overhanging abutilon, then took it down 5 years later (sorry, Jim!). We even had a lawn with a huge raised stone planter in the center that held a gargantuan modesto ash when we first moved in. (It helps that our house was twelve feet shorter along the entire east wall.)  I feel sad for the loss of some of those gardens of the past, especially some of the more beautiful flowers, but now we’ll start yet again and hopefully create a whole new look that we will also love.