By George, she's got it!

Remember here where I decided this landscaping thing would be done in phases. Well chuck it, that's not how my brain works and I've found that the quickest way to get from point A to point B is to go with that flow not against it. It turns out the best path for me is the one I create while I walk and with google as my compass, I seemed to have figured out the layout of my backyard! Much happiness for me. =)

So here is a hardly to scale picture of my layout.


GB is Garden Beds. The one next to the patio butts up against our grill which I love. Our patio is brick and was laid by hubby which there's a story in there but that's for another time. Once the patio was laid we had enough extra bricks that he could actually build a grill. At first he did it more because he really wanted to grill and our gas grill had just broke. Once he built it, we fell in love with it. There isn't any mortar so hubby can change it as he sees fit. He's made it taller and thinner, shorter and fatter. Needs a shelf? Simply rearrange a wall. I could go on and about the virtues of this grill. Maybe for another post. To get back to the picture, just to the right of the grill is a tree and around that tree I'm going to plant basil and garlic. Originally I was thinking of putting an herb garden specific to those herbs that hubby uses to grill. After a mini-brain storm session, we realized the only herbs he really uses are basil and pepper. Armed with google, I did a quick research on growing black pepper, piper nigrum. Near impossible to do apparently. It's easy to get the seeds but from my 10 minutes of study it's very hard to germinate the seeds and suggestion are to just get a plant. I found two places that will mail the piper nigrum plant, one in Australia and I already forgot where the other one was. Alas, it does not look like we'll be growing our own black pepper soon. How cool would that be though.

So back to the picture. to the right of the house, where the beige is will be river rock. To the right of the shed, there will be a compost bin and the 4 bins to the back right of the shed will be a rainwater collection system. I should mention here that my timing of coming up with this idea is impeccable. It's AFTER we've had literally 6 months of almost non-stop rain. Naturally, now that we're actually coming out of the rainy season, I have a V-8 moment and realize the perfect place to put a multiple 55-gallon drum rain harvesting system. Go figure.

The red rectangle in the back will be where the wood is stored. Not only do we like to grill, but we also have a fire pit AND a wood-burning fireplace which we like to use on the 3 or 4 super cold days we get in the winter.

The green spray paint on the left of the shed will be where native wildflowers will be planted. The light beige is a ground cover if I remember correctly called Alyssum. The dark purple will be Asian Jasmine hopefully taking off from where the light purple indicating where Asian Jasmine has already been planted. The two black circles are pecan trees that aren't going anywhere and the three red circles will be where the Italian Cypress trees will go. The black box by the cypress trees is some kind of telephone box thing and the gray circle is a telephone pole located in our yard.

The Garden Beds by the way are doing wonderful! The ones in the back of the yard have sunflowers and will have cucumbers and watermelon and pumpkin (hopefully). The one by the grill has red cabbage, red onion, white onion and rosemary and hopefully soon I'll be adding dill.