The Seven Wonders of our Backyard

Its amazing how attached you can get to something. Our backyard wasn't much of anything, but its sad to think it will never look that way again (baring zombie apocalypse and nuclear war). When we first moved in we used to wander through the yard to speculate on some of its strange mysteries...

1. The Holy Mystery of the Kidney Bean - In the south west corner of the yard was a fairly large kidney bean shaped hole about 7 feet by 3 feet. This was surrounded by a half circle of the local granite rocks that were of the vaguely flattish, seat-like variety. Was it to be a fire pit? A pond? The pond theory seemed more likely given the exactness of the kidney bean shape. Did they actually have a plastic pond that they dug up and took with them? Or did they just dig a hole and try to fill it up with water? Before you say no one is that stupid, I have seen people do this before, having no idea that the ground will just absorb the water. My husband speculated that hobos used the pit for a bonfire when the house was abandoned. This eventually lead to suspicions of dark hippy cult rituals. My money is still on the pond theory.
2. The Ancient Rock Pyramids of Budweiser - Located in the farthest corner of the property is a 4 foot tall rock pyramid. Adorning its base and hidden within it are a whole bunch of empty Budweiser beer cans. Ignoring the beer cans for now, the pyramid is oddly placed and not very will built. It looks more like a palace that the rattle snake overlords forced the previously owners to build for them in exchange for honoring the backyard human rattle snake borders of the treaty of 2001. Full beers were left in offering periodically to ensure appease their snake masters. Since moving in we have ignored their offering ritual, but we have yet to find a rattle snake in the backyard. Perhaps there's a grace period.
3. The Ancient Aqueducts - Once thought to be an ancient writing carved into the ground to communicate to aliens, we now believe several of these 6inch deep troughs to be someone's attempt to put in sprinklers or some sort of irrigation. They are a bit haphazardly dug in making me suspect this was a self construction attempted activity.
4. The Red Dragon of Corner-copia - The first summer we lived in the house we had to weed-wack everything in the backyard and out ten feet to preserve the fire line. Excited to discover what critters lived in our backyard (and wanted to eat us), I started with the areas closest to the house. Imagine my surprise when in a shady corner of the house there was a large red lizard. When say large, I mean about 1ft long by 2-3inch wide. And Red. Bright Red. Needless to say this is not a native of northern California. Being as surprise by my appearance as I was with it, the lizard stuck out this tongue in the manner of the roadrunner from looney toons (sans meep, meep) and sped off into a hole tucked under the corner of our house's foundation. We speculate that he was someone's pet but haven't seen him since, so I imagine him wandering the open fields searching in vain for another lizard that looks like himself. He only wants love.
5. The Olive Tree of Endurance and the Honey Badger Plant - There are approximately two and a half plants in our backyard. The half plant is a long dead shrub that is so firmly rooted in the ground, I haven't removed it for fear it is a load bearing shrub, and its disappearance would cause the house to collapse. The other two are alive and at least one appears to be planted on purpose. Let me first educate you on the climate and soil consistency of our backyard... Our backyard consists of rock. There a small smattering of dirt around these rocks to give it a level-ish look, but it is 99.2% large granite boulders (four out of five dentists told me this). It is full south facing with no trees or other shade structures making it surface of the sun hot during the day, and then, because this is the foothills, ice cold at night. Even the one cell plant-like algae on the rocks looks like its suffering. There is no water. When it does rain there is a small swamp in the front corner of our house, but none of it makes it to the backyard. And then there are the periodic hurricane force winds that come up from the valley and try to knock the house down. In short, nothing should grow back there. Three things do however: some type of bush that looks consists with a dwarf olive tree, a monstrous plant vaguely resembling an Oleander, and blackberry vines. Is it the later of the three that is naturally occurring due to birds that eat the berries from plants farther down the valley and then poop in our yard. Blackberry vines are very invasive and hard to kill. We do our best to beat any new growth back each month and this leads us to the final reason nothing should grow in our backyard. Once a year, we poison the crap out of the backyard to keep the blackberry growth at a manageable level. Why anything grows in our backyard is beyond me. That being said, those two bushes are doing just fine. The olive bush looks like it might not be a "intentionally planted" plant and has stayed roughly the same size with a handful of leaves. Those leaves fall off in the winter and the same ones grow back in the spring. It is the very picture of endurance. The oleander is a much more enthusiastic plant. We've tried to dig it up several times (as its trying to strangle our AC unit) but can't manage to get its gnarly root base out. We've settled for cutting it back to its 1ft nub of a root and then in a few weeks its back to its 6ft high thick green leafy self. It too has been poisoned repeatedly and doesn't care. Honey Badger Plant don't give a shit.
6. The Glass Beach - Just outside the backdoor the ground is littered with different color pebbles and glass stones. The pebbles are all different sizes and looks like someone was tossing samples down to figure out which ground cover they liked best. There are no other rocks in any area that match these which leads us to wonder if this was an actual attempt to put in ground cover. It's very, um, eclectic.
7. The Buried Tomb of Dead Leaves Gone Past - A few months ago, I noticed a patch of very smooth cement on the side of yard. I tried to dig around it a bit and it just kept going. Walking down the side of the yard further I noticed another patch of smooth cement about 25 feet from the previous patch. About 20 feet from this is the drop of a storm drain cover that happens to be on the corner of our proper. There used to be an easement but apparently this is now a defunct drain (in theory). However, the drain pipe for a storm drain should be several feet underground. Not a half inch below the dust making up your side yard. We're still not entirely sure if this is the storm drain. We've had a couple experts look at it, but it seems likely it is and it was several feet underground, until the builder built our row of houses leveling off perhaps a little too much. We took into account this may be the case and planned to build up that side of the yard with dirt to give the plants some space to grow. Hopefully this will not be an issue.

In our attempt to figure out some of the mysterious things in our backyard we've used google maps satellite images which have not been updated since before we bought the house. In it there is a mysterious part of the fence which looks purposefully torn down and tire tracks leading into the fields and valley behind the house.
At one point I speculated that they tore down the fence to get some big equipment in to do some work, but as my husband pointed out, its a very long way from any street access to drive equipment and its got to get up the hill, so perhaps not. It will remain a mystery.
All of these little strange bits add up to a very unique and interesting backyard and, in a strange way, I'm sad to see it go. To celebrate the last day of our backyard as is, we decided to have an outside picnic. Due to dry grass, we parked the BBQ in the front drive, and grilled some ka-roberts (fancy kabobs, according to A.J.), then dined in the back with a couple of friends. Good time was had by all. Not such a bad send off for our weird and strange backyard.