My new Garden in its infancy

Alrighty then, so our new 'digs' are on the side of a hill. Literally. The only real flat planting area I have is this section where my sister in law had as her garden years ago when she lived here. Its the only area with any real soil, since this hill is all uplifted medello shale- which for you non geology people means its a giant pile of diatemacious earth. No organics, no worms, nada. I'm not even sure how this weed/grass grows here, the dirt is pale grey and when you crack open the rocks you can occasionalyl find impressions of soft bodied oceanic critters and fish. Very cool fossils. But back to gardening.

This stuff sucks for growing in. It absorbs water like a sponge, but can't grow anything without some serious heavy amending.

Heres a short photo tour of what I'm dealing with in all its slanted, concrete glory.

So it looks like my best bet will be to create raised beds on this slanted flat area (looking North in the first photo, and then turning to my left looking west in the second one)

heres a wider view of the area. The only tree I want to keep is the avacado in the center of this photo, the rest of the bushes are weeds of some sort that need to be dug out.

view from our bedroom doors that open to the deck- a lemon tree, more concrete where I plan to set up some SWCs, and the 'garden' beyond. Still looking North- so the whole area is in full sun year round.

walk around the corner we're now looking northeast to part of the pool deck. More concrete area for SWCs and other containers. That window on the left is that south facing window I talked about where my seed tray setup is. I also have my potted trees and herbs below my window right now ( not shown in this photo) Awesome view of the San Fernanod Valley from this deck.

swivling around looking due East is more of the valley view, the non-functioning spa ( oh I hope they fix it soon!) and the area edging the pool deck I want to 'line' with SWCs.