Here's the current view from the back porch, near the dining room french doors:

                 


Those two chaises are the new Maui Loungers - yes, that's Indonesian teak.  The couch and chairs are also Indonesian, but Ethel has figured out that the new dinner table and six chairs are South American teak - I don't think she likes that as much. You gotta be careful about where your teak comes from.

On the far side of the pavers, to the right of the waterfall - that is where we'll be putting in a berm with plants.(I've always spelled that word ''birm' with an I, but my editor's spellchecker is quite certain that it's 'berm' with an e. so 'berm' it is.)  When we get that built up - we're ordering 100 cubic feet of topsoil for that - and get the plants in, we'll cover it with that nice Table Mesa Brown gravel.

We already have some of the plants set out where they are going to go in the berm. That big palm is a pineapple palm - a 24" box for a tree that has a one-foot tall trunk. I reckon what I'm paying for there is the root system. There's also a New England Flax and a bright yellow yucca, and right behind the yucca you'll see a Roebellini palm ("Phoenix roebelenii " - which is interesting, because the new Canary Island palm on the southwest side of the pool area is Phoenix Canarensis - I didn't know that "phoenix" was a genus of palm tree)   that we've been moving all around trying to figure out just where it should go.

So I've got to get that topsoil ordered - as well as another 18 tons or so of gravel, along with ten tons or so of rip-rap - and we sort of expecting to get the PebbleSheen done this week, so I've got to order 14,900 gallons of water ordered as well (since we're on a shared well, it's not really very polite to empty the well to fill our pool : ) - there's just a lot to get done.

You know, twenty-five years ago, I wasn't arranging tropical plants in a desert landscape beside the new pool. Twenty-five years ago today, I was setting up a pup tent outside of the barracks of the 3rd Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment, 2nd Armored Division at Fort Hood, Texas, because the powers-that-were at the time decided that I wasn't fit to live with human beings inside the barracks, so they were just going to keep me outside in a tent until they got me thrown out of the Army.

So, after I got my tent set up, instead of arranging plants beside the new pool, I was taken to a meeting there in Killeen, TX - 108 East Texas Street - and haven't had a drink since.

Which is why we're doing this, now - I'm working from home, running load tests while listening to the soundtrack from the "Once More, With Feeling" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and every so often stepping outside to move the garden hose from one of the new queen palms to another (deep watering each one for 30 minutes each day) - this beats the heck out of putting up a pup tent.

Thanks, God!