This is how my garden looks this morning. I've been working on it on my days off for a few weeks now. It was my desire to make the plot of land separating my house from my mother's into a peaceful place where you could sip coffee in the morning and wine in the evening. Until several weeks ago it was a plot of pure ugliness. Here is a picture to demonstrate this point:
My mother stole an aloe plant from the neighbor's yard. She actually dug it up and transplanted into our ground. I yelled at her for this although I secretly knew that the neighbor would probably never notice because his garden is just as ugly as ours used to be.
I put off transforming the space because I knew I had to erect a fence to shield the view of the neighboring house. I've never built a fence before and didn't know how to begin. After discovering that Home Depot sold cedar fence boards I consulted a few youtube videos and learned how to build a fence.
I dug up the stolen aloe, potted it and placed it in my mother's back patio. The strip of earth next to the graveled area will have Veitch's blue globe thistle. I ordered the roots from a website and they arrived from Holland only a week later.
Among the thistle, the thin stalky limbs of verbena bonariensis will rise. Right now they are fragile shoots of pale green emerging from the small pouch-like pods of a seed starter kit.
