Casa Farmer

Okay! So here are the pictures that so many have asked about. Keep in mind our home was a bank owned foreclosure. No landscaping was completed by the previous owners. We are still minus most of the plants, but we hope to change that in the next few weeks. We planted more palms and other fruit trees than I am posting, but here is just a glimpse.A man in a nearby suburb grows banana plants all over his property. We loved our banana plants in Hawaii, and wanted them in California. However, these are peach banana plants rather than apple bananas. We bought four plants. We thought we had killed two, but they now have green shoots. Notice I said banana plant and not banana tree. They are plants, not trees!I forgot the big deal about locally grown foods in California. Even Costco carries locally raised fruit trees. We purchased many varieties of dwarf trees that include a plum tree, Asian pears (cross between an apple and a pear), a Fuji apple tree, and a peach tree. I also found a blueberry tree (I may get a few more) from Home Depot, and a dwarf lemon tree. Dwarf trees don't mean they produce smaller or less fruit, just that the tree itself is smaller. The hooks on the left side are for pool towels.
Our property was open on either side of our home to the street, with a big cement hole dug in back for a pool. It was cemented, not plastered, so it was that grey crumbly stuff. By building code, the pool could not be finished until our house was gated and pool alarms were installed. Our walls and gates in Virginia, Hawaii, and California have varied by region. In California wrought iron gates are quite desirable. They are hand crafted and welded. These are the gates we had fabricated on either side of our home.

Our grey crumbly cement hole, filled with nasty water run off from the hillside now looks like this:The spa and pool are directly behind our house. We built an extra deck above the pool, and it accommodates our patio furniture.


The kids and I love to check out our remote control for the pool and solar power many times throughout the day. As long as it is sunny, our solar gets pretty close to 90 degrees in the pool every day. If you look really closely it says that the pool is 89 degrees, and the solar water is a warm 95 degrees. The air temperature is 84 degrees at 5 in the afternoon. But in Southern California it does not resemble the mugginess or humidity of 84 degrees like when we lived in Virginia.
If we keep pushing buttons we can make the pool do this:
Our larger yard is our side yard. Until recently it looked like this:See where the rectangular hole is at the bottom of the picture? It was a footing for this:
This is our barbecue gazebo. The wooden framing holds the counter top. And just to the left of the gazebo is this:

Our fire ring with built in seating. And finally, finally, the concrete was poured and my kids can run outside! The side yard is complete, and we will plant grass in the back space.


And somehow...I was talked into this, with the "romantic" sentiment that the flags were bought with our Fourth of July anniversary in mind.Life has been busy at home. The kids and I have cabin fever and are finally ready to get out about this summer. But after all of this work, we might just settle for a lot of back yard time.