My Next Project

So, the landlord ripped out all of the pines on our lot (and every other lot he owns in the neighborhood, which is most of them.

Now the front yard is mostly churned up dirt and stumps.

I've been spending a few minutes each day pulling up anything in that area that's vertical, trying to leave nothing but creeping ground cover plants. When there were pines there, it seldom needed mowing because the pine straw suppressed a lot of growth. The last thing I want is another portion of an acre that has to be mowed frequently.

I thought about spending big money on a number of reasonably fast-growing hedge-type plants to run across the front of the lot.

BUT!

We have a couple of beautiful crepe myrtles closer to the house. I like those trees, and Tamara loves them.

While doing some research on the Intertubes today, I found that it's just about the right time to take cuttings, plant them, and get some crepe myrtle saplings growing.

So I just spent $5 on some rooting hormone at Amazon, and I'm going to take a crap ton of cuttings. They'll go in cells, then pots, and probably come inside for the winter before getting planted in the ground out front next spring. They're not an especially fast-growing tree, but I'm hoping that even when young, they'll spread out at the top and flower, producing something like a hedge-like effect in depth (I'm thinking three rows, offset, with a tree every 11 feet or so across the frontage). We probably won't live here long enough to see them at full growth, but I'm still hoping they'll prettify things and give me a "grove" with low ground cover rather than mower-requiring grass around them.

When and if we buy our own place that we'll likely spend our retirement at, I'm hoping it will be well-suited to growing date palms or some other fruit-bearing tree.