My Garden in the Big Picture

This is my deeply personal post in which I say too much and ultimately apologize for not being more involved in the "blogosphere".  I'm sure every blogger does it after a while, so why not?
Lately I've been focusing on the big picture in my life, focusing on my portfolio and even deciding to finish my graphic design degree.  In order to do this I have had to take a position with more flexibility and less hours at my day job, which also translates to less money for plants and long drives to my parent's place where I garden.
I find it hard to focus on more than one thing, so its been difficult to balance a 45 hour job, freelance design, doing my laundry, and a blog on top of that.  As a kid I was the one who was too focused on the pretty butterfly landing on the soccer ball to even learn how to play the darn game, to give you an idea.
I love the show "Glee", but it seems like every episode Mr. Schuster comes up with another cheesy theme to tie the songs and plot together.  While I won't break out in song and dance, I find it appropriate to tie this post together with the theme "Big Picture".
I have been with the love of my life for over five years and we figured we might as well get married next year.  Eventually I'll get to share my excitement for life with the open mind and ears of our very own child.  Its definitely time for me to focus on the big picture and finish my degree so that I can have a fulfilling career and be able to support a family.  I'm not necessarily quitting or even taking a hiatus from blogging, I just consider you guys my friends by now and want you guys to know where I'm at these days, and why I've been laying kind of low lately.

Enough sappy crap, back to the garden stuff!  Although I love taking closeup shots, my favorite garden photos to look at are wide angled shots of the whole shebang... this way I can get inspiration for garden design, as well as see how other's gardens are doing.
Above is a panoramic shot of my garden right now, and that empty spot is where my variegated ginger got knocked back this winter.  I keep having to remind myself of how lush and full they'll be in time, but for the time being its just kind of an eyesore.  There's a good sized area where my groundcover of "evergreen giant" liriope was killed by my dog too, so I just have to look at it as a test of my patience.

Here's another more or less panoramic shot, and you can see the butterfly ginger reaching out over the creeping liriope in the back, doing much better than last year.  Finally, its getting too dense for the dog to destroy!

Up above I've got  a shot from the woods, with a mound of agapanthus in the foreground, my huge clump of alocasia "california" in the middle, and an assortment along the fence.  To the right is a rather harshly lit view along the fence thrown in for good measure.  I also want to note that the area around the birdbath is pretty empty for the time being, no thanks to the bananas that upped and died.  I'm considering an affordable bottlebrush behind the birdbath, which would also help protect the crown of the picabeen palm.  Besides, if I want to give the feeling of a rainforest, the more trees the better!
Now lets have a look at the courtyard garden...

Theres a lot to go over here!  The bottlebrush and pineapple guava have finally hit their stride, and will eventually help shade this sunny patio.  The lady palm and chamadoreas will take a while, but they'll also get taller someday, providing a little extra shade as well.  The bromeliads are all doing great, and producing pups to boot!

I really like the effect that the sunshine had on this photo.  The plant that stands out most is my bright orange neoregelia "tequila", but the most exciting ones to me at the moment are surrounding it.  To the right of the brom is a thriving clump of lemongrass, an essential component of a southeast Asian themed garden.  To the left and behind the bromeliad is a clump of edible ginger from the grocery store, and the stalks have a look more reminiscent of bamboo than other gingers.  This is of course, also really appropriate for an Asian garden.  Word to the wise; although edible ginger likes plenty of water, it suffers in the soggy soil that other gingers prefer.  Out of this photo and to the left is a huge alocasia macrorrhiza bulb, finally unfurling its first leaf... as well as sporting two suckers at the base!   Since this alocasia will be really architectural (huge), I've planted firecracker plants behind it so that their wispy foliage and tubular red flowers will form a nice contrast to the huge leaves.

Once again, Noel, African Aussie and Danger Garden... you won something so email me at "steve_asbell at yahoo.com"  (replace the "at" with @)