Weekend at the Farm March 7 - 9, 2013

 The Paper Whites are almost finished blooming.  Good bye, sweeties, I will miss your wonderful scent.  It has been heavy on the air for the last 4 weeks.  I love that smell!

We arrived on Wednesday evening and stayed until Saturday afternoon.  Then home to Houston for my sister's birthday dinner at Brasserie 19.

• Weather was changeable all weekend but never rained.  Hopefully it will pour on Sunday.  It has been a dry spring.
• Spent Thursday morning cleaning up the Infinity Garden, painstakingly raking and sometimes digging out by hand the leaves that get caught under the rosemary plants.  I cut back the wormwood and breathed deeply the great smell of its pretty silvery leaves.
• I planted seeds in the Infinity Garden - Chia and Chinese Milkvetch and Sweet Annie.
• I moved some Columbine and Nicotiana seedlings that had sprung up in the paths to various places - some of my new flowerbeds and some of the established flowerbeds.  I love the pretty Columbine.  And I love the scent of the Nicotiana even though the greenery is not very pretty.  Nicotiana is a good night time scent.  I don't know why, but you can't smell it during the day.  But in the evening when the air is still, the scent is incredibly strong and wonderful.  
• I painted the two steps down into the Orchard.  I ran out of red stain a couple of weeks ago when I was painting the Boardwalk before I could finish the last two steps.  So I painted them with green paint.  I also painted the inside back fence of the Orchard, it was looking a little faded.  I will paint the rest of the fence, a little at a time.  I was going to paint on Friday as well, but I kept thinking it was about to rain, and so I never got it done.
• I ended up doing some more leaf shredding on Friday and Saturday.  I wasn't going to do any more this season, but I still need more mulch.  I raked all the beds in the Shade Garden and made big piles of leaves.  So I shredded all of those and spread them in the new bed I'm building in the Infinity Garden, and I mulched the Paul Redmond Irises by the Orchard, and I mulched in the Circle drive, and around the red salvias in the back yard, and around the crinums in the Long Border, and around the plants at the far end of the Long Border.
• I loosened up the soil in one of the beds in the Shade Garden and planted two enormous Colocasia Esculenta bulbs (elephant ears).  Hopefully these bulbs are the common, non-fussy, huge-leaved variety that I see growing in neighborhoods around town.  It's not a fancy hybrid, it didn't have a fancy hybrid name, so we'll see.
• I planted seven tomato plants in the Vegetable Garden.  Two of them are the tiny little red cherry and yellow pear shaped varieties - they look so pretty in salads, I have to have them.  The others are Celebrity, Big Boy and Better Boy.
• I planted some pumpkin seeds and some patty pan squash seeds and some Little Finger carrot seeds.  The Vegetable Garden is chock full now:  Potatoes, green beans, cucumber, Edamame, squash, pumpkin, carrots, asparagus, swiss chard, lettuce.  This is the first year I haven't grown any onions.  I have one more box in the garden.  I'm going to grow gourds.  Just for fun.  My mom gave me a packet of seeds.  I will train the vines over a goat wire arbor.  
• Planted some Rose Campion, bee balm, and cleome flower seeds throughout the Star Garden.  These are summer flowering plants that will take over when the spring blooming flowers are finished.
• Trimmed the wisteria.  It is loaded with buds.  This will be a pretty year for the wisteria arbor.
• I cut back the Turk's Cap along the Boardwalk and got rid of all the dead debris from the winter die back.
• Put a wheelbarrow of dirt in the bed I have been making by the La Marne roses.  It is almost finished.  Not sure why I've been so slow to finish that one.
• Almost finished my newest bed in the Infinity Garden - I'm almost out of dirt.  Only a few more wheelbarrows of dirt left.   Planted two Turk's Cap in the bed.  
• I rooted some cuttings from a Cecile Brunner rose that is growing in my yard in Houston and from the Althea that I saw blooming along Westheimer last summer.  I stopped on my way home from work on Wednesday and took a cutting.  I did that last fall as well, but I took too skinny a cutting.  I've since learned cuttings should be about pencil-thick.  The cuttings I took last fall were too skinny.  The cuttings died.  So I'm trying again.  I planted two of the cuttings in pots, and I planted one of the cuttings in a hole filled with potting soil and perlite next to the house in Burton where it's shady and gets some good water.  We'll see how they do.
• Planted 3 Genovese basil plants in the kitchen herb garden and a silver thyme next to my Sweet Olive by the herb garden.  I planted two catnip plants in the Infinity Garden.
• I planted a clump of Black Eyed Susans that I dug up from the garden in Houston.  Planted that in the bed by the dining room window.
• I moved three small clumps of Chinese Bloodroot from the Shade Garden into the bed where I have my new Bottlebrush Buckeyes growing.
• Sprayed herbicide in the Orchard, the Infinity Garden, the Star Garden, the driveway, and the Rose Garden.
• Disappointed to see that the irises Janine gave me look like they aren't going to make it.  Not really sure why. 
• The Sweet Olives are blooming and smell so good!  There are a surprising amount of butterflies considering it is still so cold in the evenings.  It's a good thing I have dianthus blooming, the only thing blooming now that butterflies are attracted to.  They seem to have no interest in the daffodils or the irises.  Next fall I'm going to buy more perennial dianthus, I really like it.