Grilling Burgers on our Patio/Garden

In the past few days, we've been working on the garden in back. First, we assessed the soil quality. It looked pretty bad and very very dry. It was so dry, it was as hard as a rock, like a sheet of cement was there instead of dirt. It was even the color of cement! So we said, we have to go to Home Depot and get some tools to break up the soil and start making it good to garden. There were already two old rose bushes growing back there, and they survived without watering for about a month before we got there, so maybe the soil was salvageable.

After our trip to "The Depot," we were ready to get to work. We picked the hottest day, unfortunately, so breaking up the soil was even harder (although when I say hot I mean 80s). But watering the soil while breaking it up worked well, and we realized that the soil was good underneath the top hard crust. It actually retained a lot of the moisture we put into it while breaking it up. The rose bushes were infested by some crazy green plant with white tubers. It looked at first like green onion, but it lacked the deep green color and the stem wasn't whitish at the base. But it had long finger-like whitish tubers underground. It was stubborn as hell to pull out. There were multiple green tuber plants around the rose bush, which went wild, and I suspect they were slowly killing the old rose bush, taking its nutrients away to make so many tubers! At first I thought they might be good to eat, like potatoes or something, but I got so angry at them after more than half an hour trying to pull all of the tubers out, that I though, 'screw eating them!' Now I'm afraid of the tubers. What if they will grow into more green tuber plants!?





Once the soil was all turned, we went back to The Depot the next day to get some plants. We tried to pick plants that were either native or didn't need to be watered a lot. So we found some baby Italian Cypres trees for $5 and some golden evergreen shrubs (also for $5) and some native Rosemary, and ivy. I also cut some succulents from the front of the house, and planted them in the back for ground cover. We also bought some California Red Poppy seeds and Morning Glory seeds and sowed them in the soil. Hopefully they will germinate soon! Romy found a weird looking Elephant Foot Palm, and he couldn't resist buying it. We planted that in a pot and put it on the patio.

We celebrated the end of all the work in the garden by grilling some burgers on our patio. Mmmmmmm they were good!