Landscaping | California 2 Puerto Rico

For the past 4 weeks Puerto Rico’s rainy season has been living up to its name especially in the past two. For the entire month it has rained everyday for at least an hour or two starting at 3:00pm like clockwork. Yesterday, much like the past two weeks, the clouds rolled in earlier around 11:30 and the downpour started at 1:30ish which lasted until after 5:00pm. Keep in mind, I am not talking a San Diego style misting, it has been coming down in buckets turning our entire yard into a mud pit dissected by tiny streams flowing downhill to the left and right side of the house.

Check out the stream flowing just to the right of the cut in the yard

Once all of this crazy rain slows down a little bit, I would like to plant grass seed over the entire yard, prioritizing the flat section in front of the house. That way, we will at least have some green surrounding our front porch. In the meantime, Jerry and I are going to finish the rock planters and steps today. Tomorrow will be a ‘clean up all the extra rock and stone’ day and then it will be time for top soil.

One of the neighbors cleared out a bunch of dirt down by the quebrada and dumped it off up by the front yard…we’ll save some money and use as much as that topsoil as possible to fill the planters and put a 2”-4” layer of dirt on top of the rock / hard pack we have out front.

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I don’t know if you have ever landscaped your yard or worked with a crew that landscaped a yard, but tree’s are expensive! Don’t get me wrong, saplings and small plants aren’t too expensive, but if you want anything with girth you are going to have to shovel out some cash. Summer and I are really trying to keep the spending reigns tight until we finish all of the expensive finishing work and then go to town on all of the little things that would be ‘cool’ but not necessary (paved driveway, landscaping, second car).

When envisioning living in the tropics, I always pictured a property covered in tropical plants, palm trees, hibiscus, snake plants, bamboo etc. Well, landscaping is about the only thing that wasn’t apart of the deal when we bought this house. There are a few really big mango tree’s in the back yard and a few giant royal palms bordering our yard, but aside from that combined with all the excavating we have had to do in the front yard we don’t have much green in our front yard at all. Not even grass. All the rock that we exposed excavating prevents grass from sprouting and will also require us to lay down topsoil before we plant any seed,

Our front yard is dirt, unless it’s raining…then it’s mud.

Mark helped us get the ball rolling on inexpensively landscaping our yard a few days ago. I went over to one of the houses he was landscaping and scored all of the trimmings and throwaway plants that would have otherwise turned into mulch. Summer and I spent the entire afternoon pruning and planting our new plants in the pouring rain. Now we have some green.

Tropical Landscaping from Scratch