Brad's Tropical Paradise

If you're interested in making the world a little bit better, I have a suggestion: plant a tree, and care for it. If you're like me, living in the Phoenix, Arizona area, you know how wonderful trees can be, providing shade, softening the heat and glare. No, planting a single tree won't create a miracle, Phoenix will still be hot in the summer, but it's small thing that you can do that will help return Phoenix to what it was when the pioneers first began it, an oasis, not a glaring city of concrete and asphalt. I collect old photos of Phoenix, and post them on the internet, and I was surprised to see how much Phoenix had been a forest of trees from territorial times up until the late 20th Century, when most of the trees went away. And no, it's not a conspiracy, man, it's just that trees didn't seem to matter after the invention, and common use of air conditioning. So the trees went away, and more lanes were created for traffic, which moved along with air...

Dang, it's HOT out there. I've lived in the Phoenix area for a long time, but I don't remember it ever getting this hot so early in the year. So of course I'm worried about my plants. Even when there isn't record-breaking heat in Phoenix, it's important to have water on timers. Lugging a heavy hose out on a day that's over 100 degrees isn't something most people want to do, and today it will be closer to 115 degrees! So if you decided against putting in those timers, you made a mistake. Put it on your to-do list for fall. No, don't go out and do it right now. There isn't enough sunblock in the world. Plan for September, or October. In my backyard garden I have two watering systems. One is a drip system (the one on the right), which delivers water precisely to my plants, and the other is a misting system (the same as you see on the patios of restaurant, except that mine is on ground level). Yesterday I moved the frequency of the misting to ...

Rocks are an important part of my garden. I have 1/2" gravel, which is the base, and also different types of rocks, which fill different type of functions. But my favorite are the jaggedy rocks. They perform several functions, they fill in areas with visual interest while I wait for a plant to fill in, their jaggedy shape discourages people from walking in the garden, and they accent the plants. I just moved the rock that you see in the photo at the top of this post, and it has moved several times. It's a little over a foot long, and not quite as high, and whatever it's made out of (I'm no rock expert), it's dense and heavy! And it's a beauty. This rock, which I call "Craggy Rock" started way back in a corner where nothing had grown in yet next to the med palm. When that plant started filling out, I moved it a few feet over to the top of a hill that I called "Rock Ridge" - where there wasn't much else but rocks. Then as that area ...

I like trees. I've always felt that way. I feel better around foliage, I like gardens, I like plants. I've been accused of "living by photosynthesis" and in my younger days in college my fascination with plants made people wonder if I wanted to smoke them? And that leads me into why you should, or shouldn't, plant a particular type of tree. It will depend on your motivation. Speaking for myself, I just love looking at tropical foliage. I grew up in Minnesota, and anything that showed a palm tree made me think of paradise. I wanted to grow up and live somewhere like that. I live in the Phoenix area now, and yes, you can grow palm trees there. The same with Los Angeles, or the South of France, or Tahiti. So I want live where I can always see palm trees. But palm trees shouldn't be confused with shade trees. I live in a VERY warm climate, and shade trees are wonderful. If you plant palm trees where you should have a shade tree, you have made a mistake. So ...

If you have a beautiful, lush, backyard in the desert, it will attract insects. You know, butterflies, creepy-crawlies, and of course flies. Now don't panic if you see some insect life - the most important thing that they want is water, and since you have plants, you have moisture. If your yard were completely dead and dry, of course, you wouldn't attract any insects. I've known people who just pour concrete all over everything, and have nothing but a moonscape, but I don't want to live with that. So I live with bugs. But I do my best to minimize them, short of destroying my tropical paradise. The second thing you need to know about flies, after the fact that they're attracted to water, and any plant, is that they're attracted to what they consider food. It's not what we human beings consider food, but if it makes you want to gag, flies just love it. Stuff that's rotting, stuff that has passed through the digestive track of an animal (if you know wh...