Fence & Garden

Springtime means lots of garden work, especially in a house that's been overgrown with weeds for quite a while. Yup, Tung loves all that grass.



These wild, honeysuckle-like yellow flowers grow rampant in the back- and front-yards, in planters, on the tan bark. . .


The calla lily bushes are especially lush in the front yard. The stalks grow to over two feet.


African daisies line the border of the square planter in front of the house. I weeded out the rest and planted some pink and hot-flash calla lilies, as well as some Grecian windflowers, which should bloom in mid-summer.



Still trying to identify this fruit tree with snowy white flowers. We bought the house in winter, so most of what's in the garden are still "mystery trees."




White apple blossoms blush pink. Not sure about the apple variety. We will find out when they ripen in the fall.


Now this one, I know. Sweet Aroma plums--my current house has a very large plum tree of this variety in the backyard.



This one's also a familiar Vietnamese staple: persimmon. There are two types: astringent (commonly sold as hachiya, characterized by a pointy fruit with soft flesh when ripe) and non-astringent (commonly sold as fuyu, characterized by a squat, flat fruit with crunchy flesh when ripe). I don't like either. Ironically, many of the prospective houses we looked at in the process of house-hunting contain a persimmon tree in the yard. I'm guessing what we have here are fuyu persimmons. The leaves on this tree just poofed out one week, like a Chia Pet! The nice thing about persimmon trees is that they're deciduous, so I'm looking forward to a lovely change of color in the fall.


Yep, lots of weeding. This pile is just from the elevated platform in our backyard. Those yellow flowers FLOURISH here. I'm halfway to being a greener Cousin It in this picture.


The storm in January took down our back-line fence. We got the nice new fence up last week.



A full shot of the replaced fence. Because "good fences make good neighbors."


While we were at it, we pushed out the side fence. The discolored ridge on the house's side shows where it used to be. This gives us a little more area in our backyard to house a future tool shed.



The side fence from the front view. We are about a foot short of our neighbor's fence line due to where the studs are available in our house. Oh, and that tan-bark ground has got to go. We're hoping to cement it over for a cleaner look not so inviting to termites. As if we didn't have THAT problem before.