Further Pondification

Iris albicans (Cemetery iris)

It was another shovel-centric weekend. We started digging the deeper levels of the pond, shaping and compacting the 1-foot shelves as we went. Strangely, even though we'd had a week to recover, this shorter round of pond-digging seems to have hurt more than the initial dig. I guess our muscles haven't hardened off yet.

The pond--getting deeper

Matt did the bulk of the digging (that shapely hole to the back right is his), while I roundup'd the future pond bed, grass-n-roses bed, WTF bed, driveway bed, and A/C bed. That also hurt. The roundup spray backpack is really big! (God, I'm soft. I've been reading up on Cajun history, and my forebears were out there clearing mature live oak forests all by themselves, and draining marshes and building levees. THEY wouldn't balk at one puny pond, and they probably weeded their plots on their hands and knees--not with some chemical. I'm reclining indolently on the shoulders of giants.)

Matt's admirable shovelwork

Although the beds aren't really prepared yet, we went ahead and put the Bauhinia mexicana we bought in the ground. Now that we've cut down the ligustrum, we need something treeish to provide a backdrop to the pond--so we need our little Bauhinia to haul ass, growth-wise. So that it will look like this specimen from Zilker Botanical Gardens ASAP.

Bauhinia mexicana at Zilker

The cemetery irises are still in the early stages of blooming. I am SO pleased with these plants. Their foliage is evergreen, and they form tidy light green clumps that help to create year-round greenness in the shade bed. And now that they're blooming, I like them even better.

Cemetery irises