Weekend at the Farm August 3-4, 2013

I thought these canna leaves looked so pretty this morning.
Came up Friday evening straight from work.  Left early Sunday morning to get ready for a family dinner before Max goes back to school.

• Found another huge armadillo hole in the Star Garden.  It was dug out under my white mist shrub, a huge pile of dirt in the path.  Covered the area with red pepper.  We'll see if that works.  I doubt it.  That would be way too easy.
• I watered and fertilized all the roses in the Rose Garden except for the few I fertilized last weekend.  Still need to fertilize the roses in the Long Border.
• Weeded, weeded, weeded.
• Fertilized the Dutchman's Pipe Vine.
• Watered in the Greenhouse Garden.
• Fertilized the salvias in the flowerbed along the back of the house.
• Fertilized the 3 Sweetshrubs in the Medicine Garden.
• Fertilized the Sweet Olives except for the one in Max's Garden.
• Deadheaded zinnias and salvias.
• Watered all my shrubs.
• Animals got the last of my decorative gourds and the cantaloupes in the Vegetable Garden.
• Sprayed herbicide in the Circle, the Driveway, and the Shade Garden.
• Planted two Hoja Santa that I ordered on line.  I planted one of them in the shady part of the Star Garden near the Sassafras tree and the other one in the Medicine Garden.  Hoja Santa is also known as Rootbeer Plant.  Both sassafras and Hoja Santa contain the essential oil safrole which imparts the root beer smell.  Hoja Santa is used quite a bit in traditional Mexican cooking both as a flavor and as a wrap for food.  It is a root hardy perennial that spreads aggressively by underground runners.  It gets tall and the leaves are really big (which is why it is used to wrap foods during cooking).  Interestingly, it is the main ingredient in the drug ecstasy.
• I noticed some okra plants coming up in the spot where I was growing them last year.  I wondered if the would reseed because I threw a lot of okra on the ground last year - overgrown pods.  And there are four plants coming up. 
• The Marigold seedlings in the Vegetable Garden are coming right along.  And the sunflowers look like they grew six inches since we were there last weekend.