When G asked me what I wanted for my birthday this year, I told him I want the same thing for my birthday and Christmas: plants to rescue our yard from its current “ain’t-nuttin-but-dirt-and-rocks” condition. We still have the jade plants by the front door, though G is no longer in charge of watering. One dead chinaberry tree and a stressed pair of jade plants later, I’m back on watering-can duty.
Sadly, it is indeed watering-can for a while longer. Our hose bibs (the outdoor faucets where you connect a garden hose) are DOA. The one in the front turns into a fountain the second you turn it on, because it’s got a split in the valve at minimum, and potentially also some damage to the supply line coming off the main water shutoff.
Yeah, that’s not a plumbing disaster waiting to happen at all.
The one in the back doesn’t turn on. The handle is broken, presumably by someone before us who tried to force the issue.
I adore G like nobody’s business, but the man has elevated procrastination to an art form. He’s got a friend who’s a handyman and has done work for us before, several times. Supposedly G was going to have his buddy come and fix this stuff – along with the dripping kitchen faucet and a couple of other smallish projects. It’s now XX months later and buddy still isn’t here. No diss to the buddy, by the way. G just never got around to asking him.
Today as we discussed plants, I stopped asking or waiting for G to do anything.
We have a home warranty plan. We’ve had it since we bought the place. I have paid to renew and upgrade it so it covers a lot of extras it didn’t originally include – like faucets and spigots, oh my! I filed a claim today, requesting a plumber. The trade fee (copay) is under $100. Ever pay a plumber to do the tiniest fix? $100 is peanuts. G’s buddy gives us good deals but even he can’t give us that kind of deal. Besides, this is precisely why we have the home warranty plan in the first place, for Gawd’s sake.
This is also why I pay the bills. Back in the day, I used to get irked when G wouldn’t touch the checkbook or bank account. He has a degree in accounting, and I felt like it was something he could handle without breaking a sweat. But all his smarts and kindness aside, I’m glad he refused the job of bill paying. We’d have been screwed.
The picture at the top of the page, for anyone unfamiliar, is Texas sage (also known as silver rain). It’s a desert-friendly bush that can reach 8-10 feet tall if not given routine haircuts. The leaves are silvery green, and after a rain or healthy watering, they’re covered with purple flowers. They tolerate even my spousal unit’s haphazard idea of watering, but I’m hoping to eventually get a drip system put in so they don’t depend on either G or me to carry water – even if it’s by a hose instead of an multiple trips with a repurposed gallon milk bottle.
I’ve asked for at least a couple of Texas sage in the front yard. They’re glorious and relatively inexpensive, the perfect win-win.
Also in the works: more purple. I have seeds to plant jacaranda trees, shown below:
I chose jacaranda for several reasons. Obviously, color. They don’t blink at our climate. They grow fast, reaching 15-20 feet or more in the first two years. Mature shade trees in the yard shave a lot off the AC bill. This specific species is also incredibly good for the soil. Unlike most plants, jacaranda injects nitrogen into the soil, meaning once we have one or two established, it will create a microcosm of support for other more fussy plants in the immediate surroundings.
If we do any other non-food flowering plants, we’ll go with something in the orangy-gold family.
Besides planting for looks and for shade, though, I intend to turn this set of galvanized tubs into small herb gardens. They’ll benefit from the shade of the jacaranda(s) later on down the line, but for now I should be able to manage a winter garden, anyway.
Yes, these galvanized beasties were yard-sale finds. I think we paid $4-5 or thereabouts for both of them. The larger one is at least two feet across. The biggest expense with these – other than regular watering – will probably be enough potting soil to fill them!
I had the same problem with the front faucet, broken. Was $200 to fix, only because they didn’t have to break the blocks the pipe is set in. My home warranty didn’t cover faucets… It didn’t cover much, so I dropped it after 1 year.
That’s why I upgraded our plan right away. I work in the home repair industry and had a pretty good idea of what would and wouldn’t be covered, and read the fine print to know what an upgrade would cover. They’ve already been out and fixed our bathtub leak, so I know for a fact what we have now includes faucets and fixtures.
We’ve done a lot of work ourselves – replaced the water heater, replaced kitchen and bathroom faucets, replaced the toilet, etc. But I knew there were bound to be things cropping up that I most definitely didn’t want to tackle on our own. Plumbing, electrical, all that jazz…
I’m glad to hear that yo ur home warranty can fix things you need done. I am sorry that you have to rely on yourself to do those other things but at least you will know they were done correctly.
Love the trees and bushes. Good luck with them.
Thanks, Terri. He DOES handle a lot of day-to-day stuff, especially the yard work, etc., that I can’t do. He does the dishes and the cleaning. But there are mental blocks, I think – things he won’t touch and probably can’t, because his brain shuts down. I know he gets panic attacks now and then, so I try to allow some of these chores may be triggers.