A Weekend at the Farm October 6-7, 2012

Friday dinner at Arturo's with the whole family, Saturday shopping with my daughter for her birthday.  Arrived at the farm Saturday evening.

• Helped my husband paint the section of shed he just built that houses the rain barrel.
• Picked lots of okra.
• Admired the bottle tree allee that my husband is building for me at the far end of the Star Garden that leads to the Rose Garden.  He got me 2 cases of blue bottles for my birthday and hung them on cedar posts that he set in the ground with cement.  One box of bottles had to be returned because they were broken, so the allee is not quite finished.  
• Planted shrubs that my children got me for my birthday.  Ordered from Woodlanders.  I planted a Calycanthus hybridus 'Venus' in the Infinity Garden, common name is Sweetshrub.  This is a white flowered sweetshrub, very unusual.  I planted an Osmanthus fragrans aurantiacus.  The common name is Sweet Olive.  This one has orange flowers as opposed to the small cream colored flowers of the commonly sold variety.  I planted it in the bed next to the air conditioners.  I planted a Kerria Japonica alba in the flower bed across from the La Marne roses. This shrub blooms single white flowers, rare.  I also planted 3 Bottlebrush Buckeyes (Aesculus parviflora) in the beds along the boardwalk.  Unusual suckering shrubs with white flowers.  Finally, I planted 3 Clerodendrum bungei - shade loving plants that bloom pink composite flowers.  They are aggressive spreaders.  All these plants are unusual and not grown around these parts.  I'm very happy about them.  They look pretty puny after suffering through the shipping process, but they'll be fine come spring. 
• Weeded.
• Pulled up lots of Wedelia.  I don't know why I planted Wedelia in the first place.  It is a ground cover.  It was a bear to pull up, the roots are tenacious.  I imagine I'll be pulling it up for years to come, but I wanted to plant the Kerria Japonica in that spot.  The Wedelia was in the way and it was taking over everything.
• The asters are about to bloom.  Last spring I dug up some plugs from the mother plants and moved them to various new beds.  Those tiny little starter plugs are quite large, sprawling plants now.  So it should be really pretty next week when it is all blooming. 
• The Toad Lily is also about to bloom; it's covered with buds.  An unfortunate name for such a lovely plant.  The blooms look like orchids, really special.  Toad Lily is a shade plant. 
• The White Mist Flower is also covered in buds.  Mist Flower attracts all sorts of insects to its flowers.  The Blue Mist Flower is already in bloom, and the butterflies and bees love it.  It was cold this weekend, so the butterflies and bees were nowhere to be seen, but they are here and waiting for the sunshine. 
• Couldn't spray herbicide because it was too cold.  Herbicides don't work in cold weather.  It's getting pretty weedy everywhere, hopefully next weekend I can get out there and spray.
• I found leaf cutter ants in the Rose Garden.  At first I thought it was deer, in fact I think deer created some of the problems because some of the plants were only partially denuded.  Leaf cutter ants keep after a plant until there is not a single leaf left on it.  I found the trail and poisoned it.