Rock Garden Revisited

It's been a while since I talked about the rock garden project. I had the idea of making a succulent/rock garden against the back side of the house (with lots of pretty plants and interesting rocks of different shapes and sizes). Maybe something like this:

So I started a search on Craigslist for (cheap) rocks and didn't have much luck. A meeting with one seller fell through and I eventually just got distracted with other things. 

Slowly but surely, though, the garden started to fill in. We planted a small container garden of herbs toward the back of the space and a couple neighbors donated plants they were taking out of their yards.

And today it looks like this!

these are the plants the neighbors donated

 some succulents I put in pots

So it's kind of taking shape as a container garden rather than a rock garden, which works for me. If I find some cool rocks along the way, I'll stick 'em in there too. And I'll keep filling in the blank spaces little by little—maybe with some native flowering plants or a few more succulent containers.

I'm happy with it so far. It's come a long way since we first started working on it.

The backyard in general has come a long way since we first moved in.

THEN:

NOW:

Oh, and those paint samples on the back wall are part of our attempt to figure out which exterior paint color is perfect for us. Um, still no decision yet. More on that later...