A Weekend at the Farm 09/11-12/10

Candida Rain Lilies

Candida Rain Lilies

Friday night football and Saturday wedding dress shopping. Arrived at the farm Saturday evening. It's still so hot and humid, but it's getting cooler. It's not getting cooler based on the daytime temperatures, but rather because the days are getting shorter. The shorter days offer relief to the plants. Plants such as my roses are beginning to stage a come-back for the fall. The south has such beautiful fall and winter weather.

• Inspected the work the landscaper, Lucas, is doing. They are making quite a mess, driving their small forklift through my arbor. He assured me he will clean it all up. I told him to install raised sprinkler heads because it seems my husband is always having to replace them with taller ones. I'm trying to get ahead of that. But he took me at my word and installed tall ones right around the path off the back porch. They look pretty unsightly.
  
• Cut back bee balm, smoothed out the soil and laid chicken wire over the top of the flowerbed. The armadillos really like this particular flowerbed. There are certain areas that they frequent quite a bit. Cutting back bee balm is a pleasant task. Bee balm is in the bergamot family. Bergamot is a key ingredient in Earl Gray tea. It smells wonderful.
  
• Spent some time cleaning out the Star Garden. I removed a vine that I thought was going to be beautiful, but I think the nursery had it miss-labelled. The flower was insignificant. I pulled it all up before it went to seed.
• Pulled up some okra. I planted two kinds of okra, one of them I do not like at all. So I pulled it up to get ready for spinach and broccoli. Nematodes are still really rampant.
• Weeded, weeded, weeded.
• Sprayed herbicide in the Rose Garden, the Shade Garden, and the driveway.
• Watered here and there, but it rained pretty well last week so not much was necessary.
• Swam in the pool. Water felt really good!
• Put plant labels on some of my roses. My new plan for plant labels is laminated papers with the plant names on them, then I tack them onto wooden stakes. I made hundreds of plant labels, of course that means I need hundreds of stakes as well. Stakes rot quickly, I haven't found a good solution for that part. But the laminated papers work really well. I've used them on the herbs in my Medicinal Garden this summer and they still look brand new.