Fall Tree Planting

Seems like fall weather has taken its time coming to central Arizona, but it's finally time to plant deciduous trees.  Our docket this fall includes an apple, a dwarf mulberry, a moringa, a dwarf avocado, a curry leaf, and a pineapple guava.

These trees will line the walkway to the mailbox, leaving room for two rocking benches, one on each side of the sidewalk.  (One will go about where the chair is in the picture below.)

I have a sheltered location picked out for the avocado, where it will be shaded by a mesquite in summer and by an olive and an orange in winter.

I was pleasantly surprised this year to find desert hackberries at Boyce Thompson Arboretum's fall plant sale.  These are native bushy trees that produce a striking orange (and edible) berry in the fall.  Yes, you can have fall colors in the desert.  I've picked a location for one of these near the northeast corner of the house, where eventually it will give summer shade to that corner and part of the sidewalk.

The other will probably go somewhere in the "sonoran biome" region of the front yard.

Elsewhere in the yard, the luffa vines are sprinting up one of the olive trees.  Today I found a flower 10 ft off the ground.

And the bananas and peanuts are still doing their thing in the chunky monkey patch.