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.