A little landscaping...and bugs

My friend Sonia and I went out to the house yesterday with one task: landscape around the address rock.  I had a couple of agaves that I bought using a Groupon last summer that were still in pots.  They were starting to look a little ragged so I wanted to get them into the ground.  Also Sonia, who knows everything there is to know about native landscaping, offered to help with something at the house.  A small landscaping project was the perfect half day task.

The agave (agaves?) that I have can get quite large (and pointed) so they needed to be away from the front door.   We installed the address rock a while back but it was just sitting all alone in the rocks.  Also recently, the neighbors all pitched in for a concrete road along the sloped areas of the road leading to all of our houses.  That concrete comes right up to the address rock so we needed something to soften the area a little.

Sonia and I stopped by Lowes on our way out to the house to buy some soil and plants.  We bought things that do well with little care and were deer resistant: lantana, rosemary, yucca, fountain grass and small spiny succulents.  After deciding on placement of the plants we started to dig.  The "soil" out there is really mostly rocks and sandy material so digging was mostly done using a pick axe.  We added the soil we bought into the holes and mounded a little around the plants.  Here is a before picture taken over the winter.

 

And after:

 

You can see how much the area is greening up from the spring rains.  These plants are not as small as they look in the picture; the address rock is pretty big.  Once the plants fill in a little I think it will be great.  I might add a few small succulents around the front over time.

Thanks Sonia for all the help!

On a side note, look what we found (already dead) in the house when we got there:

It seems like things like to come into our house to die.  We rarely find any insects alive.  Hmmmm. It's our first spring with this house and I suspect we will be seeing incrementally more insects than we did over the last eight months.  Last weekend we found what looked like a dead baby tarantula.  My youngest son scooped it up on a piece of cardboard and put it outside.  To his surprise the spider unrolled itself and ran away.  We also found a baby scorpion just sitting in the middle of the tile hallway.  Makes me wonder what else we have hidden in the house.  Maybe better if I don't wonder...