Hello from Phoenix area

Dropping in to say hi. Been gardening for years, but only in this area for about five years - the desert of Arizona is a different ball game for sure! Still I'm managing to create a space that is thriving and certainly looks a lot better than what I started with.

Hey Redshoe, nice to see you over here! 👋😃 I think it's been 5 years in Tucson for me, too, after quite a while growing on the East Coast. What a difference as you said LOL 🤣🌵 You really transformed your place, wow!! That ocotillo is huge 😆 Love it

Glad to be here 😁 Going from the East Coast to here is a greater change than I had - lived in central/Northern California for many years so our current weather is a bit like California summer (cooler evenings, 100º days). Thanks, it has and continues to be a lot of work, putting more effort into the front yard now. It really has been the rocks that have been the hardest to deal with, as I'm not able to remove them, I can just move them around.

It was a big shock when I first got here, that's for sure! 😂 I was used to 50" of rain / year in Jersey, and then even more than that in North Carolina.

Really love it here though, it's helped me learn so much about building healthy soil, since you have to work so hard at it in the desert 🤭

I was just thinking about rocks the other day, because we're stacking up a wall of them at my local community garden for thermal mass and to keep some cold air out on the side near the wash. It get's COLD over there! Sometimes 25F so we can't really do any tropical stuff there.

We're lucky though to have almost no rocks in the garden, mostly a lot of sand and some silt. Very fine stuff near the wash. I don't know what I would do if we had a lot of rocks in the garden, though, that sounds like a pain! 😩

Wow, I've never lived in a place that received that much rain - San Francisco averages about 25 inches a year, and that was the wettest area I've ever lived in. Probably why I'm not having a huge learning curve when it comes to adjusting to this region.

Yes rocks can be great for helping a microclimate. I think I'd like it if I had more of the larger ornamental ones, not entirely boulders, but larger than what I have (almost gravel). Instead I'm dealing with an HOA that has almost every yard (particularly front yard) covered with gravel rocks. I'm creating swales and hills - digging down to plant, and then piling up the rocks to create mounds / hills. Admittedly the quail in particular like it since they can get up a bit higher and look around. It is a lot of work, but does keep me active.

I moved to Southern California from New Hampshire at the age of 18. That was 60 years ago, and I've never adapted to the dry environment. In NH we had our own well with wonderful water that I took for granted, but here we seldom drink tap water. As a kid in New England there was a spot in the back yard where water burbled out of the ground when the snow began to melt. Stuff just grew! We picked wild strawberries and blueberries. I've never really been a gardener, but I very much prefer to be surrounded by greenery. I'm dreading drier years ahead. We're trying to transition to native plants but it's hard to get rid of a mature tree that you've nurtured from a sapling. It's slow going.

Always lived in a dry environment, so I can't imagine anything different 🤣 I do miss the well water at my parents old house though, that was great.

I'm not sure that one has to completely remove items that are established, depending on the situation. To basically shift what you are doing now, while "grandfathering" in mature trees (as long as they are healthy and have adapted to the heat).