I think people who don't live in climates like this really understand how hard it is to get things accomplished in summer. I have the same schedule - 30 minutes of work followed by the same for a break. The only difference is I try to stay outside in the shade under a fan and only go inside when I know I'm just too hot. And the weeds in these climates are just insane.

That's a ton of work for this time of year.

great update, a lot of work has been put in that yard!

@Harry’s Palms , @Jdash , @kinzyjr and @Chester B thanks for the kind words and encouragement! The last month has been a lesson in humility, i.e. "you are no longer 25 years old." 🤣 I was out in the sauna all day every day for 7 days straight. I disassembled the old agave bed and collected...by hand...all the red lava rock and salt-and-pepper granite and moved it into the new smaller areas. I'd collect 7 gallon pots of rock, move and dump, go back and collect more, rinse and repeat. 30 minutes in the blazing sun, 30 minutes in the A/C in front of a fan, grab a new tshirt and go sweat some more. The washing machine got as much of a workout as I did. After about 5 days straight my hands and forearms and shoulders were so worn out that just doing simple things (like getting a glass of water or brushing my teeth) was difficult and achy. The last straw was picking up the concrete blocks and carrying them two at a time across the yard to redo the center bed's rear arc border:

You can see a tall 7g of granite on the left, ready to slooooowly distribute by hand across the front. I also moved most of the white/pink quartz as cosmetic filler. It took 2 full days to redistribute all the rocks. I also had to dig out the front border at the grass, because the blocks had been slowly sinking 2-3 inches down into the sand. It now looks like this with a fresh layer of mulch around it:

The original big agave bed on the left got the same treatment, and I now have a big new open area in front of the Bismarck. The ladder is up against a Pygmy Date that has just refused to push new fronds. There's a missing block at the front because I was moving a pair of Chamaerops from the deep shade just to the right of the ladder. You can see the weeds already trying to take over near the Bismarck....grrrrrrrrr.....

These two Chamaerops went into the ground back in 2019 and 2020, and were promptly in deep shade from the overhanging Arenga Engleri and Bismarck. So I moved them over to the SE corner:

They are super stretched out and scraggly from too much shade. I tried a new tactic on moving them that seems to work. I pulled out the reciprocating saw and a 12" wood-and-nails blade, and just cut a slightly inward-angled circle/oval/oblongish route all the way around them. Then I could just stick the shovel into the cut line and pop them out of the ground in one fell swoop! It took a little bit more setup (extension cord and saw) but the actual dig took only 2-3 minutes and was super easy...in relative terms.

@Merlyn You might not be 25 anymore, but the garden is looking pretty sharp with some extra space between the plantings.

Today I half-trunk-cut the rear pygmy date in the above photo. It was just not growing new fronds, despite having some green on last year's burnt remains. The circled area is the top of the new spears. It's not promising. But I did the hydrogen peroxide + Daconil pour and the stuff towards the back didn't bubble...the front stuff did. I'll check in a few days and see if anything happens:

In better news, the front doorway Licuala Grandis appears to be alive, for now! About a week ago I carefully cut back the older dead fronds from around the crown. This was tedious but I tried to find any signs of life. About 4 or 5 inches down I found two small spear tips, and cut about an inch below them. I did the hydrogen peroxide + Daconil here too. Today I saw the spears grown about 0.25" from my sharpie mark, and have opened up a little bit with green!!!

Next to the Grandis maybe-a-survivor I moved a couple of others. Just to the right of the Grandis is now a Lanonia Dasyantha and an Arenga Hookeriana. These were planted in the NE corner under a Butia that suddenly died. The Peace Lily stub/volcano is slowly growing back too:

Further along the porch are several clumps of the tall green/purple unidentified ginger, some white Caladium, a variegated Calathea Lubbersiana, and some slowly-regrowing Philodendron "Xanadu." The second Arenga Hookeriana is just to the right of the post:

Great job there . I feel so inferior, I planted one palm a week ago in our courtyard and I was in rough shape physically. It has been so hot here , plus humidity we’re not used to . I really like your transplant method , I may borrow that one. I did use a radial saw with a dull blade to carve through roots of mature palms so I could put pavers down . It was messy ( enter mask and safety goggles!) but it got the job done and the palms didn’t seem to mind , even the Archontophoenix . Harry

@kinzyjr I've been intentionally spacing things out more over the past year...and especially after the deaths from February 1st. Too many places looked just haphazard, like some crazy idiot just threw stuff into the ground at random. Oh wait, that's EXACTLY what happened! 🤪 In around 2023 I just decided I was going to plant out every single thing in my nursery area. Clearly that was a mistake. A bit more space makes it a lot easier to weed, prune, and not get stabbed every time I try to walk through an area...in addition to looking nicer when you can actually see each plant. When I've moved things to fill spots I've looked first as "does this empty spot need anything?" And then I've tried moving stuff from a too-congested area first, instead of buying new plants.

The reason for moving the above Hookeriana and Dasyantha is that the Butia went from looking ok to d-e-d in a matter of days. This one has always had fungal spotting issues on the leaves, so I didn't really notice that the fronds were almost all dead.

The above photo was on the 3rd, and I cut it down on the 7th when all of the slightly-blue fronds had completely died. The upper trunk and bud were brown rotted dead, and all the rachis & petioles were internally discolored. The most likely culprit is Thielaviopsis, due to the rapid death and the sickly sweet ripe-banana smell of the tissue. This makes sense because I was always having to chop off live fronds for driveway clearance. Bud rot smells like rotting garbage, Ganoderma kills the lower part (which was clean) and Lethal Bronzing/TPPD dries out the rachis instead of causing discoloration and ripe banana smell. Unfortunately I lost all the photos of the removal, because I left my old Samsung Galaxy S8 outside in a snap thunderstorm. It was waterproof...but not THAT waterproof! It had a good run after being retired from my actual cellphone. So now I'm using my wife's old S8 instead!

To replace the Pindo I transplanted a decent-sized Encephalartos Whitelockii/Ituriensis from the backyard. I had planted a triple of those back in June 2020, and they just grew into an impenetrable mess of super-stabby thorny stems and leaves. Not only did it look bad, but it hurt a lot every time I had to prune it. So here's the final version:

@Harry’s Palms I've been doing the reciprocating saw thing for a while, but mostly for cutting up bamboos or old oak stumps. I had a "blinding flash of the obvious" this morning when prepping to move the Chamaerops. I'd used the saw to cut around the above Butia for trashing it, but it didn't occur to me that it might actually work better than just the shovel. When I sliced around the Chamaerops the slightly-damp sand stuck in place to the roots. So not only was it easy to move, but the root ball held in place instead of having all the sand fall off.

If you are in dense clay and rock then a carbide-tipped blade is probably a good idea. I've been using the Diablo pruning 3tpi ones for all the stumps and bamboos. They stay sharp in sand for so many cuts that the eventual failure is snapping off at the tang instead of getting dull. I wish they weren't $10 each...

I used an old Bosch RS7 for years on stumps until I finally destroyed it. I then made the mistake of buying a "counter weighted" Milwaukee saw, which was super smooth in regular cutting...until the blade gets stuck. Then the extra counterweight means extra super strong rip your arms from the sockets vibration. It was so bad that I went and bought a Bosch RS325 and tossed the Milwaukee in a cabinet as a "in case of emergencies only" saw.

And in the middle of all the above, I spent a solid 6 days doing nothing but pulling weeds. It's for sure my least favorite task, especially with this new weed...er...hardy imported perennial. I've figured out how to deal with Artillery Fern (hand removal and 2,4-D), and most other weeds don't like to grow with a thick layer of mulch. Some pop up in March and die by April. Big ones like thistles or pokeweed or even potato vine are easy targets for hand pulling. However, this one popped up this year and is INCREDIBLY annoying. I'm not sure if it's Sida Acuta, Hyptis Verticillata, or something completely different. It has small white flowers and the bees love it, and it makes little green round seeds that seem to have a 500% strike rate. If you see this stuff, do NOT let it get started. The biggest problem is that it'll grow in thick mulch and loves to grow right up against the trunks of palms and cycads. So I'll miss one and then end up with 50 small seedlings growing in the middle of a spiky Dioon Edule cluster, and get stabbed many...many times trying to pull them all. The only good thing is that it doesn't seem to grow in the lawn. I guess the grass roots choke it out.

I pulled 3 yard waste bags full of these beasties out of the NW corner: