The sun came out...

...and to the garden we went. Three or four hours later, we'd planted:
Leucadendron salignum "Red tulip"
Silver-leaf princess plant (Tibouchina heteromalla)
2 Didymochlaena truncatula (fern)
2 Cheilanthes sinuata (fern)
Pyrrosia hastata (fern)
Aloe striatula
Agave attenuata
2 Ceanothus "Joyce Coulter"
Aloe lineata var. muirii
2 Clivia
Echium "Pride of Madera" variegated
Fuchsia boliviana
3 Ornamental grasses of some sort
An armful of Zantedeschia (callas)
A pile of succulents
A partridge in a pear tree...

I put a leucadendron at the front entry (top photo) surrounded by stones (the dietes that was in the front was being killed by dog pee.)

We've arranged the ferns and clivias in a shady spot at the top of the steps (above) below the standard roses. When the roses get watered, it will trickle down and water the ferns too. We planted tibouchina and fragrant ceanothus and African Blue basil (Ocimum kilimandscharicum × basilicum 'Dark Opal') to create shade for the ferns and a nice spot for our future garden bench (below - chair is where bench might be.) How awesome it will be to sit on that bench and enjoy the garden, one day.

Matt re-jigged the small front bed and added our prize echium, among other things (below) and now all it needs is a twig border. At P. Garden every third shovel strikes a rock/buried plastic bag/rusty battery, and all holes dug must be amended with compost or sand or have a virgin sacrificed on the spot in order to get deeper than 6". This is what we in the trade call a "bloody nightmare." Thank goodness Ron the Iron Maverick came by and lent us a wheelbarrow today! It saved many back-and-forth trips with shovels full of compost.

The compost pile is fast disappearing - I have mixed feelings about that. It's good that the unsightly heap is going to vanish from the front of the garden, but we do need that stuff to assist in converting the horrible rocky clay into something slightly plant-friendly. We can always go and pick up more of it in the car - perhaps we can create a pile in the back and add horse manure from the barn and house compost scraps too, but we will go through it very quickly. Something to ponder.