A Weekend at the Farm 12/04 - 05/2010

These are the last of my Cosmos. Winter will take them. They are so delicate looking.


Saturday very pleasant. It got very cold Saturady night, but it was sunny on Sunday so the cold felt really good.

• Spread mulch in the Rose Garden on Saturday. Poppy seeds springing up everywhere! I covered them all up in the rose boxes. They mask my beautiful spring flush of roses - I can't have that! But I will still have a wildflower show to remember in spring, but it just won't be in my rose boxes. They are springing up everywhere.
  
• Put out suet for the birds.
  
• Marveled at the beauty around me. Mother Nature is an awesome woman.
  
• Albert extended the wall around the pool equipment. That was good a project. Now that The Orchard has become a destination, the pool equipment was exposed from that vantage point. Now it is closed off.
  
• Pulled up some plants that have died due to the cold weather. I plant either perennials or re-seeding annuals. Once the annuals have died they can be pulled up. I leave the dead debris on the perennials because it helps insulate them throughout the winter.
• On Sunday I raked leaves and dumped them into the compost bins.
• Mulched in the Star Garden on Sunday. Pulled up some plants that are crowding out plants that I like more.
• Also mulched the Hydangea Bed and moved a Hot Lips Salvia to the new bed behind the house. This bed looks much better without that Salvia crowding the Big Daddy hydrangeas.
• Mulched the Hollyhock Bed. The Montbretias are popping up.
• Put water in the bird bath.
• Moved the tender perennials I have growing in pots into the Greenhouse.
• Fertilized all my sweet peas.
• Began laying down a path along the Long Border. This flowerbed needs some help. A crushed granite path edged in green landscape edging with stepping stones will do the trick. This project took a long time. The landscape edging used to be around each of my fruit trees, so they were all bent into curves. I had to bend them straight (that wasn't a huge success, the path is very wiggly), then bang out the stakes that had rusted tight so that I could re-use them. That was time consuming. I will need to buy some more stepping stones and some more crushed granite to finish this project, so it will not happen this month. December is not a good month to buy expensive landscaping materials.