I’m sure we’re considered the neighborhood wackos in our town for ripping out our grass and putting in native plants (and even doing the vast majority of the work ourselves, including all the maintenance, planting and hardscaping). However, the yard is finally getting to the point where the plants are growing well enough (California natives love winter rain) that it’s actually beginning to look on-purpose. If you look at my houseblog there’s a lot more on the yard, but suffice to say it’s predominantly native with some zone-appropriate fruit trees and veggies in our ‘side yard’ (aka ~2 foot strip).

We started planting in late spring of 2007. Most of the plants survived the summer. We did two more rounds of planting in fall 2007. The majority of the plants are considered coastal sage scrub and chaparral. Most of the plants are either from Las Pilitas or Theodore Payne; a few are from Tree of Life (a nursery with wonderful strawbale buildings).

I’m going to experiment with dyeing with some of the plants, like the yarrow — the really fluffy-looking plant to the right (okay, slipped in some fiber stuff!).

Not much has been happening fiber-wise besides slow progress on Herbstlied, the Eyelet Cardi (now past the division for the arms), and continued practice spinning.