Howdy everybody. Now that I have been kicked to the curb for the final time , bringing my working life to a close , I find myself needing to devise ways to fill my time.
We have a large , mature oak tree in the front of the house that we neglected for quite a while. It repaid this benign neglect by shading and killing all the grass , flowers ,and other plantings in the front of the house. Looking at this barren mess now that we have thinned and trimmed the tree we got the idea to use my newly gained excess of free time to create something personal and/or unique. We decided to create a rock/cactus/succulent garden with a distinctly Texas flavor.

Dead ground. 

My lovely daughter Hallie was here visiting for a week and wanted to help  , so first we raked off what scraggly growth we still had and removed the old bricks which had defined a flower bed. We raked the plot smooth and then covered the ground with Chronicle mulch to discourage future weed growth.

Ready to be transformed.

When next I have the time and energy ( and it isn't over 100 heat index )I have some stones to be placed along the sidewalk forming the work area , which I will then cover with rock chips. At some point I will be creating a 4' x4' outline of Texas ( I actually think I thought of a pretty cool way to do this ).