Back by popular demand: Lunes

Here she is, on MY couch, posing for the camera while covered by a velvet blanket, befitting the spoiled model that she is.

 

 Melancholy...

  

...and aloofness, ain't she a natural?

The kids

Collie is always in a state of agitation when around us, except if allowed to come in the house, where she mellows out and proceeds to nap. Outside she constantly chases Oso, as if he were a lamb, calculating trajectories when he's running back with the ball, intercepting him at an angle and biting him on the front legs. She also growls nastily at Lunes, showing lots of white teeth, when she perceives our attention is being diverted to Lunes. She's still quite small in size, below average for the breed. Must be her chronic respiratory problems.

 

A really red cardenal bird near our house

  

No amount of petting is ever enough for Fabiana, our outer perimeter dog.

  

No longer shy, Shakshuka now comes out to greet us and say goodbye to us when we leave, and is very relaxed scratching Lunes' snout when the evil one comes to attack her. Fearless and cuddly.

  

Ah, the psycho Zeytin. She follows everywhere we go, meowing away, and trying to climb up our legs. She also steals Fabiana's dead rodents and the other dogs' food.

  

 Oso, with short hair and in full alert mode, waiting for the ball to be thrown...

 

And retrieving the ball, closely followed by Collie...

The plants, one year later

Many of the millions of things we started planting in August 2008 perished, others barely survived, and yet others thrived.

I have pictures of the ones that have done well and are coming back strong this spring. Some of them have been in the yard for less than a year, as we have never stopped planting, really.

Gauras were my first flower flower, planted just for the flower, and my mom's gift as well. We planted 70 of them at the end of last summer, and they were tiny. Now they have grown so much you can measure growth by the day. We are adding another 35 to join the two patches that were formerly separated by a fence.

The guavas are native to Uruguay and do extremely well in our yard. We have about 8 or 10 of them.

The inga is another native tree, a gift to us from the owners of Pachamama nursery. It's doing sell, slow but steady growth and doesn't show much damage after nasty storms.

The Tunberghi pine (sure I got the spelling wrong) is a Japanese pine tree that grows bushy and not tall at all, and has done very well in our yard. We tried one out, then added about 6 more. We may add more yet.

Jazmin de leche is a creeper variety that withstands all the punishment in our garden. Other varieties didn't make it, but the four we planted of this type are doing great, lots of new leaves.

In search for diversity in terms of bushes, Isabella suggested the melaleuca, which has a flower like the bottlebrush but white, and whose new leaves come out pink. It suffered a lot during the frosts and tough winter, but it's coming back with a vengeance, and the pink leaves look gorgeous up front and in the distance. There' a large section planted with them, about 25 bushes I think. That's Zeytin's tail on the bottom of the picture.

Acacia trinervis, impervious to our bad soil (clay), strong winds and salt air. Doesn't like it when pruned though, I've seen three older ones in our yard become half dead after pruning, so will have to consult with Agustin and Isabella on how to keep them alive when we want to trim them to form a sort of wall. They grow super fast.

The canelon is a native tree, we found it after clearing a mess of brush last year. It has been punished on the sea side, where it has much fewer leaves, but we hope that as the acacia trinervis "wall" grows, it will block the tougher southern winds and give it a chance to get bushier.

The purple-leaved dodonea planted last November has done extremely well. We decided the guy who planted had set them in too straight a line, so we added a few more a couple of months ago for design purposes, those are the skinny ones on the front, which gives us a before and after look at how the original ones did.

Espina de la cruz is a local cactus type bush that is very hardy, has the most incredible folliage in the shape of a cross, and the most deliciously fragrant flower. Also native to our yard. Our dumb former gardeners pruned them in their mutilating style, so now this one looks like a ridiculous little tree, not their natural shape, which is much more irregular and bushy. I'm told it will grow back.

Our fig tree got so confused with the summer in the middle of the winter that it produced a fig in August, equivalent to getting figs in February in the nothern hemisphere. As Isabella said, "Poor thing, she's so stressed." We're impressed by how hardy this one is, and we did get a few figs last year already, so we're planning on getting a few more.

Partition and annexation

Both the above are views of the lot we bought last year but had not yet integrated to the rest of the property. They had some landscaping against the road, and were unfenced.

This is Omar, our fence builder, and the new fence he put up separating the two lots where the house and pool are sited from the lots fronting on the main road. With a little gate to communicate both and keep the dogs on either side as necessary.

These are views of the newly unified road-side plots, as seen from the bottom of the yard, close to the new fence, and looking out towards the road. Both lots are now over half an acre each, 2,300 and 2,400 m2 respectively.

It's complicated to convey even with pictures, and since I am awful with the drawing softwares, can't do that on a map either... But yes, there were three lots fenced as a single property, plus one outside the fence, and now there are two separately fenced lots roughly equal in size, comprising the four plots of land.

Which means, lots more landscaping opportunities opening up. The top soil for the plantation has been delivered, two truckloads that have been dropped in three mounds surrounding the house. Fabiana loves to dig into them and sit on top of the mounds, queen of all she surveys.

Hopefully tomorrow we can start planting, followed by installation of irrigation system for the new areas. Fence, planting and irrigation will total about $5k, hope Barbi doesn't notice...

The great thing about having "the other garden" is the ability to stash our dogs on the other lot and be free to open the gate to unload something, or just to greet visitors without anyone ending all pawprinted or with their butts on the ground from so much canine loving.