LysmachiaMoon's blog: Work begins (sort of) on the Front Bed

I've been doing little this and that jobs around the place, but with the heat and dry weather, it's really difficult to do much. I did get the Long Fence Border cleaned up and made a stab at the South Shrub border yesterday. Also got the Rose Border and the North Shrub border cleaned up...they did not need much.

After I sat down and looked at the plans for the Driveway Bed and the Front Bed, I decided I had better make at least some progress on those two major projects, drought or no drought. (I had hoped that by this time I would at least be able to move some iris and other things around, but in this dry hot weather, I think that would be foolish). So, I got the lower part of the Front bed cleaned up and mulched (looks so much better...to be quite shame-facedly honest, the front of my house looks like an abandoned house...I just let that Front Bed get so overgrown and weedy because I kept thinking there's no point in doing much since the whole thing is coming out in the fall...big mistake). I also dug a planting hole for the peony that I want to move in there and I'm going to also dig a planting hole for the Siberian Iris. I figure if I have the holes dug and prepared with compost, etc. it will serve two purposes: First, It will be DONE (one less thing to do), and Second, it will give me a better idea of how my design/layout will look. If I really don't like where something is going to be, easy enough to fill up the hole and move it over.

I wanted to do more of this work this morning, but a friend gave me a big basket of tomatoes over the weekend so I thought I'd better process them into sauce today so they don't rot. I think I may have about 6 quarts of sauce from that batch.

We are hoping and hoping for rain later this week. It is really getting desperate; not only are lawns drying up, but now I see some of the large shrubs are starting to show stress. I'm watering where I can, but with a "slow well" it's always a bit tricky to get things watered without having the well pump shut off. When that happens, it can take a couple of hours for the water column in the well to come back up...which means no water at all. We have a very very deep well (450 feet!), but it's "slow" at only about 4-5 gallons a minute. Delicious water though....it's full of pure limestone and as sweet as milk. (It's so full of lime that when you add anything acidic to it (like tea or lemon juice or even instant coffee) it foams up!

I have two wheelbarrows and don't you know...both with flat tires. THe oldest barrow I dont think I can get the wheel/tire off to have it repaired, so I'm trying filling it with expandable insulation foam (the kind in the can like Reddi-Whip?). I gave this a half-hearted try a few months ago and it did not seem to work very well...then after the tire sat for a while, I realized it was really hard about half way around...we just did not put in enough foam. So, Saturday, I drilled a few more holes into it and filled up the other half. My lord, the stuff just came oozing out into these huge "puffs" of insulation so I'm pretty sure that tire is now full. But it's still soft. I can only surmise that since it's not exposed to air, it's going to take a long time for the stuff to harden. We'll see. If this actually does work, it's a really good idea.

As for the other tire, I'm going to get R to take it off the barrow and then take it to a local tire shop to have it patched. They only charged me $5 the last time I did this...several years ago... So it's worth it.

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