I've been keeping to my plan to get up early and get straight out to the garden (after of course the necessary first slurp of coffee...without caffeine, I would most likely end up either toppling into the perennial border and snoozing or pulling out the coneflowers while carefully preserving the thistles). It's working very well; the mornings are nice and cool, even on days when the afternoon temps soar into the 90s, and I think best of all...it's so peaceful. Just me, the birds, the dew, and the occasional cat.
Yesterday, I got a lot of weeding done around the soon-to-be "bog garden" and this morning I got the weeds out from that narrow strip between the house and the deck steps and also on the other side of the deck steps. Also trimmed the spirea there so they aren't touching the steps (vegetation touching any inch of the house drives R crazy. Lots of things drive R crazy. Ergo, R often drives me crazy.)
I think I made 4 wheelbarrow loads of weeds to dump in the woods....I have been using weeds as weed smothering mulch/compost in the woods for quite a few years now. During wet summers (like this one), it really works amazingly well...within days, the green weeds are brown and melting into compost. During dry summers, the effect is a little slower and doesn't look as good, but it still smothers out the weeds and builds up my "artificial woodland's" soil. (BTW: the red stemmed fern I planted in the woods during the winter is doing GREAT. It's spreading ...now 3 times the original size.)
I also got the gift spirea planted in the Pine Gap, as well as a small clump of daylily roots (not sure what color). Got the Knockout roses deadheaded too...they put on a great June show and it looks like they're getting ready to put on a good July show too. Deadheading them should spur them along.
I think that tomorrow morning I may try to move a couple more truckloads of the wood chips from the pile left by the tree trimmers to the Pine Gap area. The weeds I sprayed a week or so ago are really knocked down pretty well, and I think if I can get a good layer of chips over whats left, that should deliver the coup de grace. I need to get the sprayer out (maybe today if I can manage it) and get some areas around the property sprayed. I think I'll also mix up some Roundup in a spray bottle so I can spot spray small areas as I weed by hand...those spots where it's too dangerous to get in with the big sprayer for fear of hitting something I don't want killed.
Those dratted cats. One of them peed on my seedling cabbages and it looks like the young plants may not survive. They also managed to hit the verbena bonariensis seedlings in flats too...those look bad, but may survive if I can get them into the ground. That's on the list for this evening (got too tired and too hot to do more this morning).
We're forecast to have an even hotter and more humid day today: high of 95 with a heat index of 103-105. Good day to stay indoors and clean out the basement. We got a good hard rain late yesterday afternoon, so everything is very wet and the air is heavy. I decided to do a little "light weeding" along the deck garden here, maybe tidy up the walk a bit. You know how that goes. An hour later I've got two enormous piles of weeds from the main beds and I'm covered in mud. At least it looks a bit better and I found the iris division I planted out in early spring! I'm of two minds about going ahead and weeding out the future bog garden. It sort of seems as if fate is pushing me to go forward with that... And that area is completely inundated in weeds...mostly foxtail grass and a few lambs quarters, so nothing too awful...in fact, at this stage it looks kind of nice and "meadowy" especially since some vagrant daylilies and tall fleabane is growing in there too. The thing is....this heat. If I clear it off, I'm almost going to have to tear into it, dig it out, lay in the liner, haul in compost, dig up the drain pipe from the downspout and reposition it, etc etc etc. Not to mention I'd like to get the recirculating fountain moved into that area, which will mean ...oh gods.
If I dont...If I put this off til later, when it's cooler...then that whole area will just keep coming up weeds again and again, because it's pointless to mulch it. *sigh* Decisions decisions.
One chore I really do need to do is lift/divide/move some iris. I've got some nice ones that are languishing in the fairy glen because it's getting too shady for them there and I want to put them into the top border, especially those amazing huge chrome yellow iris that I got from somewhere. The color is too strident for the fairy glen but would do well in the top border.
Broccoli and cabbage are doing well, but still no heads on the broccoli. Harvested my first two zuchinni this morning....I'm going to have them for lunch.
Young chickens (batch #1) are nearly full grown and the batch #2 chicks are coming along fast too. I would like to introduce the batch #1 girls to the hen run later this week. They need to get used to being outside. How to get them out and the younger ones kept in will be a challenge.
A very "close" morning...very heavy humidity. I know it is probably just imagination, but it actually seems to take more effort to breathe. Very warm, the a.c. kicked on by 8 a.m. (we keep our ac temp at 77-78 degrees), so it's gonna be a misery today. It's clouding up (drat...I just finished a load of whites) so we may have rain. I think I may just stay indoors today and work at my desk.
I COULD spend part of the afternoon in the basement cleaning up my laundry area and canning shelves. What a mess....I tend to stack everything in that corner during the winter (overwintering roots/bulbs, bags of potting soil, pots, what have you) and I haven't yet really given it a good cleaning.
Mimosa is blooming....lovely fragrance! The one mature tree over the "cave" is in full bloom; the second one is barely hanging on...that poor tree just has never done well. I may consider taking it down this fall and replacing it with something else. The young mimosa at the base of the steps is not blooming...it may be too young. My "baby" mimosa in the Storybook garden is growing like crazy!
Finally got around to taking some cuttings. 18 each of Santolina, catmint, and lavender. I put the cuttings in their flats and set them into this giant plastic storage box that I acquired somewhere. Then set that in the grape arbor, where it will get a mix of dappled sun/shade and hopefully be a good "mini greenhouse."
I hauled another wheelbarrow load of mulch up to the Storybook garden. I'll tell ya whut....for the amount of huff, puff, and effort it takes to get a load up the hill there...it sure doesn't cover much ground! *HA* On the way back down, I thought it's pointless to be pushing around an empty barrow, so I stopped and filled it (in a matter of minutes) with weeds from the top border. Then on down the hill, to dump it in the woods...but hey, I'm right here and I have snips...so I deadheaded my roses. And then, since I've got the wheelbarrow, might as well do a little weeding in the rose bed and oh, well, since I'm right here...might as well tear into the north shrub border and I have the snips right in my pocket so why not prune up the shrubs a bit.... You know. At least I really did get some tidying up done. then I got too hungry damp (it started to rain) and tired to go on so I left it all for later. I'll get guff for that..."why are there heaps of weeds in the lawn...?" *shrug* Duh...I dunno... *finger in nose*
YAYYYY!!! My elephant ears (colocasia) are FINALLY coming up. I thought they were goners but now I see green little nubs poking out of the ground. What a relief. They did so spectacularly well for me last year, I really was afraid I'd killed them by letting them get too damp over the winter in the basement AND getting them outside so late. I will do better next year, I promise.
I think that maybe next week, if we get some rain that softens up the ground, I might tackle the big "dig out" for the bog garden OR if that looks like too much for this time of year (the heat!), then I think I'll start digging out the stuff at the base of the deck steps in preparation for the new "tropical cliff garden" that I'm hoping to put in there. There's a nearly dead sage some creeping sedum and spring bulbs in there and that's all going to come out. I'd like to start moving the 5 overgrown pink spirea, but not sure it's a good idea...I don't want to kill them. So I think I'll content myself with cleaning out the lowest strip and at least getting some idea of what I've got to work with. I do know I'm going to need some large flat slabs of rock for the design I have in mind....I really don't think I can manage actual big rocks, so I'm thinking of casting my own in hypertufa...
Speaking of hypertufa...I had this brainstorm idea but I dont know if it will work. I've always admired (envied) gardens that can have tree ferns in them but our climate is too cold. Then, at J's backlot, I noticed a couple pieces of very big diameter (like 6-8 inches) of old PVC drain pipe. So I'm thinking....is there a way to maybe cover the pipes with hypertufa so it sorta looks like the trunk of a tree fern, then pop a potted fern (like a boston fern of something) into the top? Hmmm..... This is something to tinker with...
YAY!! again....my Bishop of Llanduff dahlia is blooming! I have 2 plants this year and both are doing fine and covered with buds. I think I may have lost my Clair du Lune though... But having the Bishop back is great news.
Found out that a pretty bad power surge is what did in my old well pump. Apparently, a few miles from me, a utility pole tipped over and a high tension wire touched a low tension wire (I have no idea what that means) and sent a big surge thru the grid. A house near where this happened had the electric meter BLOWN OFF THE SIDE OF THE HOUSE. Sheesh. I feel like we got off easy.
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Got E a big load of mulch at J's yesterday...hot sticky work, but always worth it. The "back way" into J's back lot was not nearly as bad as I feared...just a fairly gentle grassy slope. So I don't think I'll be afraid to try it again...but not in wet weather.
Spent a good hour-plus in the veg this morning, weeding. Ye gods, what a mess. It's always a mess by this time of year. Every year I say, "I'll keep after the weeds THIS year." and every year, they get away from me. One thing though, putting in mulched permanent paths has really helped....there's still a few weeds in the paths, but at least now I dont have to weed just so I can physically get into the garden! I got about half the onion patch weeded, plus the red beets. I should go back out but it's *whine* so hot.... And I'm kinda hoping we'll get rain and make the weeding easier. I also cleaned up the outer perimeter of the veg garden fence , so it looks a lot better.
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Making really good progress with the 2 new feral kittens (Coco and Barney). Yesterday and again today, I've been bringing them into the house to give them breakfast and confining them in the office for a few hours. Yesterday, they were only in about an hour before getting a little fretful, but this morning they were inside for about 2-3 hours and were sound and peacefully asleep when I checked on them. I took them back out to mom and they're outside with her now. At least now I know they are both getting enough to eat and the really good news is, they're really getting socialized the right way. They now run TO me when they see me, not away from me (like their mom does). I'm a bit concerned because it sounds as if they both have a problem with their teeth maybe not meshing properly...they make a sort of grating sound with their mouths after they're done eating. They don't seem to have any problem eating or meowing or licking, so I am trying not to get toooooo worried about this. I'll have the vet look at them in another week or so.
