Xeriscape

When you live in the desert it’s hard to keep anything looking green, especially lawns.  Ours looks pretty bad.  We’d love to have a bit of lawn but have decided to take it out and xeriscape the whole area with rocks and desert friendly plants.  I’ll leave a small space for seasonal flowers to add some color. 

We haven’t started this project yet because we have to rent equipment to remove the dead lawn.  We haven’t had time to do this job.  Hopefully it won’t get to hot before we can tackle this, or it might be this fall before anything happens.

As it is we got two days off in a row so we could cut back bushes and take out dead plants.  We filled up three trash cans with stuff, got sunburned in the process, and scratched all over by twigs and wayward branches.  We were a sight at work the next few days.

The good news is once we can do this project we’ll save on the water bill.

L is for lizards

We have an abundance of these little critters in the desert.  Most prevalent are the neck-ringed lizards, but we’ve also seen a few others here, including an albino lizard.

 Albino lizard in the desert behind our house

 

They hibernate in the winters here.  Once they start appearing all over the place, we know that the cold weather is gone for the year.  These guys take up residence all over our yard, but this is fine because they eat bugs.  In the summer, it’s not unusual to see half a dozen of them clinging to the stucco on our house.  Their homes become the rock piles, crevices and behind our storage building, among other places.

 The lizard that lived in our fireplace

 

One year we had one living in the fireplace.  This year we have another one who’s decided to make his home behind the shutter in the front of the house.  There was one that lived there a couple of years ago but it was caught and eaten by a passing roadrunner.  Koki was very upset as she watched the roadrunner catch her friend, beat him to death on the rocks and then eat him right in front of her.  She pouted for days.  I suspect that was her way of mourning.

 A lizard with an attitude

 

Naturally she’s glad to see one back again this year.  The cats love to sit on a stool by the window and watch this guy as he plays with them by sticking his head out of the shutter.  This provides hours of fun. 

A lizard on our patio

I have at least a hundred pictures of lizards.  Like most things around here, I can't stop taking pictures.

The Lounge

Look at these guys.  Where is the fear factor?  I think most of the critters around here have seen us so much; they’re quite comfortable hanging out in the yard. 

Rabbits on my patio

Here’s another shot of a rabbit that likes to climb rocks.  This is unusual for rabbits, but anything can happen here. 

Enjoying the view

On a sad note, we had a young jackrabbit that hung out in our yard and slept under a tree.  He did this almost every day and would venture across the street to my neighbors too.  Both of us felt so bad when he met his demise last weekend.  We both “knew” him, so it was different than finding a different critter lying in the gutter.

 Our jackrabbit friend gone to the great beyond

The things we do to save a tree

Locust tree - Sunni's photos

Sometimes I wonder why we bother.  The desert is such a harsh place, but it’s nice to have some shade.  This poor tree has a broken stake that we need to replace, but we don’t have many supplies around here, as we did when we lived in CA.  We had a scrap pile that I really miss.  I could always find something to do a quick repair if I needed to.

 My temporary fix - Sunni's photos

The stake on this tree broke down below ground level when my husband was in OR, so I stacked up blocks and big rocks as a temporary solution.   I managed to rob these items from other places in the yard.  Since then the stake broke in another place and was doing this tree no good at all.  Wouldn’t you know, we’d get a windy rainstorm and had to go out in that in order to secure this tree so it wouldn’t snap off. 

Sunni's photos

We now have it tied in three places to keep it steady until we can get to the nursery to get a proper stake.  We used a rope and the nearby rocks and trees as tying places.  We needed to protect this tree in several directions because of the wind, so had no choice but to use an extension cord as our third “rope.”  Right now, it’s a hazard to walk around out in the yard in the dark.  I did that once and walked right into a rope I couldn’t see and forgot was there.  My boney behind landed on the rocks.  Luckily, I didn’t break anything.  Of course, the wind was blowing then too and my hair was in my face, which didn’t help matters.

I learned to tie my hair up before heading into the wind and to carry a flashlight providing I don’t need both hands to do a job.  

Sunset in the Desert is Astounding

Desert sunset

Despite the cooler and rainy weather and the overcast days, we’ve had a few great sunsets when the sun emerges from a bank of dark clouds before disappearing behind the mountains in front of the house. 

 The desert behind my house

The light catches the rocky bluffs in the desert behind our house and sets them all aglow.  This situation only last about five minutes so if I don’t get the camera quick, it’s gone.  These pictures are natural too and not improved by Photoshop or any other photo enhancing software.

 The desert behind my house

These rocks really look as if someone is inside and has turned the lights on.  This is another fantasy moment for me as I can imagine these rocky crags being home to all sorts of creatures with all the same comforts we have, couches, beds, a kitchen, etc.  My mind can go wild writing a short story in my head.  I guess desert scenery serves as a nice picture prompt for me.

What do you think of these rocks?  Aren’t they exquisite?  Could you write a story from these pictures?