I'm all grown up now!

Today I finally felt like a grown up. Until now I had just been a kid getting married, having kids, buying a house, cooking dinners...but today we landscaped. Somehow that just resonates in my mind as something only adults do. And when you do it--you have arrived. That's how I feel. And for our first attempt I think we're doing pretty good :)

Most of the credit has to go to our friends who also live out here about 4 miles away--they came over with their truck and said, "Let's start pulling bushes!" And boy are we glad for the help--having a new home is hard work--and when you have 5 acres it's hard to know where to start!
So we started on this little patch in the middle of our circular driveway (see above pictures). It has all these cool desert plants and cacti growing in it, but you can't see most of it because of all the creosote bushes.

In Arizona, the southern third of the state is covered with creosote bushes (say "cree-uh-sote"). They only exist here because they can't survive above 5000 ft. in elevation.

I found this interesting tidbit off a website:

"Many people who are new to the desert notice the peculiar odor in the desert on the rare occasions when we have rain. People who move to the Phoenix area look at each other and ask,

"What is that smell?" It is the creosote bush. It is a very unique odor, and although many people don't care for it, some seem to like it just because it conveys a positive message – RAIN! Although some refer to the odor of the crushed leaves as the “heavenly essence of the desert,” the Spanish word for the plant, hediondilla, means "little stinker," signifying that not everyone considers the odor heavenly or pleasing to the senses."

Well that's about how we are feeling about these bushes--little stinkers! They are everywhere! This is what I see when I walk out my front door...and to the east...and west...and north...

The creosote bush is the one in the right side and all over.

They are cool in the sense that they can survive so well with little to no rain and actually they look really cute if kept small, and I think I will keep a few and keep them trimmed back, but when they grow out they look long and straggly.

Being a desert plant they have very shallow roots so that they can get the rain easily, so our neighbors discovered that by wrapping a chain around the base and hitching it to their truck you can pull them right out of the ground--very easily! Here's my hubby working on a few:
So we cleared probably 15 or so of those, and our neighbor, Marsha, showed me lots of neat things about some of the native plants we have--like our century plants (american agave). They are the bluish one in the bottom right corner and my cat is sitting in the shade of one. The ends of the agave are sharp--Marsha told me that if you break them off, a little fibrous string stays attached and cowboys used that to sew up their clothes! Agaves also make little "babies" as she calls it--all of a sudden a new little agave will pop up about a foot from the parent plant (is that reproducing asexually? I think so). So you can just dig that one up and replant it! Well we had about 20 of those in there that needed replanting because if you let them grow (and they grow HUGE) they really crowd each other. So you really have to leave a lot of room when you are planting them.

Aloe Veras are the same way. Marsha brought over a bunch of aloe vera from her house (the little spawn "babies" she didn't want :) and so we planted those too and now we have 2 kinds of aloe vera in there! Aloe Vera is amazing for burns. You just brake off a branch and rub the juice on your burn. Here's a row of aloe veras we have in our backyard.
She also discovered for us we have a baby saguaro cactus! There it is in front of the agave. The one closer to the bottom left of the picture is a barrell cactus. The difference is in their prickers. The saguaro cactus has prickers that grow straight and don't curl inward like the barrell. To me, the saguaro cactus is so Arizona. They are native to our desert (the Sonoran desert) and the Saguaro flower is our state flower. They do get big--they can grow to 50 feet! But they grow pretty slowly--only an inch a year. And it only takes 100 years for the first arm to grow--so I'll be waiting anxiously for that :)

Landscaping was really fun. And it gave me a new appreciation for the desert. Growing up I always took the desert for granted and longed for snow and maple and cherry trees to adorn my house...anything but desert landscaping please! But now we moved into a house that was all desert landscaping and at first I thought alright--why fight what's already here--but now I'm so glad for it. It's beautiful really. And I think it's pretty cool that we only watered them once a month and they are still alive!

The desert is so unique. The now "grown up" me really appreciates it and is so glad to live here and call this place home. Once my husband met a Sun City snowbird (what we call the old people who come here for the winters and leave and go back to their state during summer) and he told my husband that he was going to make AZ his permanent home because "this is God's country."
And you don't find sunsets like we have anywhere else. Here's a picture of one I took 2 days ago, all of a sudden my daughter said, "Mommy look at the pink clouds!" The sunset was stunning--the entire sky was pink--but you gotta be fast! By the time I ran in to get my camera the sun had almost set and the sunset was almost over--but here are the remains of a beautiful sunset from a very amateur photographer :)