The neighbors can see you shirtless inside your home

I live in a duplex situation, ordinary little stucco place (sniffs, I miss my California bungalows) and yah, one of the first things I did was take out some trees.

On the sins of people who plant stuff or design it, I think my worst sin, metaphorically, was obeying city rules, or once in a while the developer's rules. Usually the cities though. I was early on into drought resistant plants (California, the Los Angeles area itself long known as semiarid desert - there were no native tree in the LA basin itself, south of the Santa Monica Mountains), and used some fair amount of natives. But, in the projects in the more desert areas where a lot of development was happening, the city rules required lawns.

Lawns have had their revenge.

I am pissed at myself for not being noxious about that.

I did quit taking on those projects. The last big project, actually small relative to the desert ones, when I was on my own, was designing for several acres of condos where the developer was a chinese client of my former japanese boss and knew me and listened - so I got what I wanted, reasonable non thirsty plants, with a lot of drip irrigation, a lot of calcs done re the water usage. The city, in retrospect given other cities, did not insist on lawns. I guess all this time later that they had someone from a good local uni, Cal Poly, come and advise them re requirements to developers.

Sorry Ed but if this had been my neighbors I would have raised the window and screamed window peeper.

That's the plant I need.

I googled and bookmarked it, osso.

Twenty years ago, he and I would have had something going. These days I have other interests.

Quote edgar:


Don't hold back, edgar. Just tell us how you really feel about your backyard neighbors....

I should have added, by birds.

Well not by that plant, but, naturally, some other plants proliferate.
I hope.

I suddenly realized, as I painted the new bathroom door, which I built from scratch, that I already have the plants in place. Two years ago, when I made the decision to clear all the overgrowth back there, it was rife with yaupons. I had to clear thorny vines, poison ivy and yaupons. The yaopons grow like weeds, get as big as trees, stay green all year and they are already there. I have been cutting them to the ground every few months; yet they persist in growing. Hell, buckaroos. I got it made.

I am yampon ignorant. Interested.

They can overgrow an entire yard if not tended.

at least they don't have spikes. Or do they?

They don't have spikes. At the apartments where I worked they often grew up under the established shrubs and gradually over grew the shrubs until the ground crew was trimming them instead of the shrubs we bought. I fought them until one manager told me to leave them alone. So, half of the shrubbery there is now yaupons.

I gotta investigate..

Timber bamboo is a runner.

A friend built a steel (whatever, I don't remember) chamber to grow running bamboo in her driveway. Bamboo is complicated and beautiful.

At the same apartments I was writing about, a neighbor in a house on the other side of the fence, decided our fence was ugly. He planted bamboo along there about fifteen years ago. He has some tall bamboo, right up against the fence, these days. It has never been a problem, so he got what he wanted and we did as we wanted.

That migbt have not running bamboo. There are two types, the other being clumping. I had a client whose house, on first observation, had running bamboo way under the house.

I went outside, between showers. People from other places may not realize that southeast Texas still has flooding problems and that it has been raining almost daily for weeks. I am not in danger of flooding at all, but the rain has curtailed my yard work, almost totally. But, re the problem people across the fence, it could be a blessing. That corner of my property is growing wildly right now. I am thinking about cutting off a triangle there and letting it wholly revert, except by the fence, where I need access to keep vines from climbing the trees. There is a wide variety of plants growing there, including yaupons and other trees I don't know the name of. If I do that, I expect the view to be obliterated in a matter of weeks.

ask him the name of that bamboo - bamboo's differ a lot, and I happen to love bamboo, but the types are important.

or maybe you can snag some of it, given permission. Better to know what it is, if you can.

I'm following behind, still haven't looked up yaupuns. Manana.