Jonathan, having decided the East side of the front yard was looking a bit barren, came up with a plan to spruce it up a bit. The plan included three rows of plants, each row containing a pair of similar cactus, or agave. The first row, closest to the street, which will remain the shortest of the rows contains two agaves. One, a gift purchased for us at the Phoenix botanical garden brings a nice splash of dark green to the yard. Its paired with a lighter green, variegated agave that we had previously housed in one of our back yard pots. Its pretty fair to say that as we got closer to the house, the planting became a little more treacherous.
The second row contains two prickly pear cactus, one deceptively called the "Teddy Bear Cactus", and the other, well I'm not quite sure what its official name is, but its native to Arizona and should have some lovely flowers in the spring/fall. Sure the Teddy Bear, with its little fuzzy looking spines gives off a cute appearance, but I'm pretty sure its the plant equivalent to the Devil! Our planting approach was to bring the ceramic pot as close to the hole as possible, break the pot on site and hope we could guide the plant into the hole without too much glove-near-plant assistance. Turns out we did pretty well. Yes, there was plenty of tweezing throughout the whole process since the Teddy Bear is like a porcupine and pretty much ejects groups its spines when clothing or skin is near, and we did have to toss our gloves rather than deal with the constant pokes, but overall, it went well. Since the spines on the second prickly pear are larger, and more spread out on the plant, getting it out of the pot and into the ground was pretty simple.
The third ,and eventually the tallest row of plants, contains another gift bought from the Phoenix botanical garden, one of my personal favorites, the Mexican Fence Post. I do not know the name or type of the second cactus in the row, but it will eventually grow tall, is pretty lanky already, and has thorns the length of cocktail weenies. The Mexican Fence post was another easy to plant item, but I can't say the same for its row-mate. The second cactus also came from our back yard and was also in a pot that had to be sacrificed for planting/personal safety. Mind you, at this point I am gloveless thanks to the Teddy Bear planting adventure. After we broke the pot and were guiding the plant down into the hole, the little beast decided to tip towards me. I moved my hands away from the danger zone at which time Jonathan tells me "get your gloves on". I understood the theory, but no gardening glove was going to protect my finger from being skewered had I sacrificed my hand and tried to catch it mid fall. Nothing broke and cactus tend to be pretty hearty so we finished planting without further drama
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Running low on energy, but wanting to finish up our landscaping efforts for the day, we managed to plant what served as our 2011 Christmas tree, a recently purchased Mexican Fan Palm. This little guy is the same type of palm planted closer to the street in the front yard, but is a bit younger and a bit smaller.
The front yard has really taken on a new look and we're quite happy with how its shaping up. Our goal is to finish the walk way this weekend (fingers crossed) and perhaps fill in some of the focal areas with white accent rock. Mid planting Jonathan asked if I ever thought I'd be planting cactus. I chuckled and responded "Nope, but I also never imagined I'd live in New Jersey/Virginia/DC, meet and marry an Alabama boy and buy an atomic ranch in Arizona!"
Looks Great!!
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