Fairy Garden

Robert & I went on a trip to Cambria for our anniversary...if you've ever been there you know there is a place called Moonstone Beach, with a very long boardwalk.  It's an unbelievably magical and lovely place.  We had an ocean view room and we just lazed about drinking wine, eating, & walking on the beach.  What did we bring home?  A bunch of rocks!  This is what we did with them.

End-of-Summer gardens

We have been struggling with gophers all summer long! Even though our home is in the suburbs near Los Angeles -the Santa Monica Mountains- it borders an arroyo (creek) and with that comes all the life that happens around any body of water. We have a lot of frogs, squirrels, rats (yuck), owls, hawks, snakes, coyotes etc that wander through the property at one point or another.
Anyway, back to the gopher issue...over the spring the city was working on the other side of the creek and the sewers and I think all the pounding drove the ground animals to our side of the water to get some relief! Naturally they found my yard especially fun with an abundance of chicken food, vegetables, water, and stupid dogs who have no idea what they SHOULD bark at, a haven indeed. The garden was been totally disrupted with gophers digging holes, I had to plant tomatoes in big pots that I dropped into the ground (not too successful), the brick pathways started sinking in from the tunnels. I couldn't even grow a darned squash plant. So Robert called the gopher exterminator, and even that didn't work. He was certain it was because of the mess in my vegetable garden that the exterminator couldn't find the tunnels...I disagree but what difference does that make? So he spent 2 evenings after work clearing out my entire vegetable garden...it looks horrible...just a bunch of dirt. But I'm already fighting against it and replanting things.
We did get to harvest some goodies though...here are pictures...