Weekend at the Farm July 11 - 13, 2014

 Janine gave me these bulbs.  This is the first time this one has bloomed.  It's so pretty!  I'm not sure what it is.  She told me it was a crinum, but I've never seen one like this before.

Went up on Friday morning.  Stayed through Sunday and left from there Monday morning to go to work.

• Spent Friday morning working in the Orchard.  Cleaning up the Orchard was my primary focus all weekend.  Turned over the soil and pulled weeds in the bed with the Mayhaw tree.  Covered the soil with two bags of grass clippings that I filched out of yards by my house in Houston.  Grass clippings rot pretty quickly, but they make pretty mulch for a while. And they are free.  Trimmed the blackberry vines in the rear bed.  Pulled up Brown Eyed Susans in all the beds.  They have all died and gone to seed.  Cut back Mexican Hat that was leaning into the paths.  Pulled up Larkspur, it has all gone to seed.  Still lots more to do, but this is hard work, so once it got to noon I quit.  Began again on Saturday morning.
• Noticed my Harlequin Glorybower has buds on it.  Three years and finally some blooms.  This must be the year of blooming because my Mexicali Rose has buds on it as well for the first time in as many years.
• Watched a pair of Cardinals feeding each other. Very sweet.
• Dead headed the Butterfly Bush.
• Saturday morning I got out to the Orchard by 7:30.  Worked until 11:00.  Cleared out another bed and spread leaf mulch around the edges, left the center open for zinnias seeds.  Cut away dead blackberry vines.  Wasn't as bad as last year because I wore my rose gloves.  They are elbow length and leather.  Stickers don't penetrate them.  Lots more to do.  I haven't tackled the biggest bed yet.  I'll do that one tomorrow morning.
• Harvested my honey on Saturday.  I used a couple of pieces of equipment that my neighbors loaned me.  (They live next door, and they have two hives. )  One of them was a board that fit over a container.  A nail protrudes from the top.  You rest the super on the nail and you can easily scrape the wax off the comb, the rotate the super and scrape the wax off the other side.  Simple, but a definite improvement over sitting the super in the sink.  The wax gets everywhere when you use the sink.    They also told me that the bees will clean out the spinner.  The spinner is about three feet tall, and it gets covered with wax and honey.  It's basically a nightmare to clean.  Problem solved!
• Josh and I are going to make mead with some of the honey.  I poured a lot of it into two one-gallon jugs because I didn't have enough preserve jars.  A gallon of honey weighs about twelve pounds.  A typical mead uses about fifteen gallons of honey.  We harvested a little over three gallons from my hive.  I'll give a lot of it away.  But I'll keep enough to make mead.  That should be fun. 
• Sunday morning I tackled the biggest bed in the Orchard.  I totally cleared it except for a few clumps of perennials.  I edged it with leaf mulch and left the center area clear for zinnia seeds.  There are still four or five beds in the Orchard that need to be cleared out.  But it looks much better.  I harvested a baggy full of mammoth sunflower seeds last year that I plan to sow in all the beds remaining to be cleared.
• There are pumpkin vines crawling all over my mulch pile.  They seeded themselves from a  pumpkin that was thrown into the mulch pile last year.  The vines are rooting into the mulch at the leaf intersections - I didn't know they would do that.  I've never been able to grow a pumpkin despite many tries, so I don't want to pull up the vines.  But I can't use my mulch or I will break the vines. It's a dilemma because this time of year the weeds grow really agressively.    
• Spread zinnia seeds in all the beds I cleared.  
• Sprayed herbicide in the Orchard, the Vegetable Garden, and around the pool.
• Mopped the kitchen and dining area - honey is sticky!
• Transplanted some red Turk's Cap from the Boardwalk Gardens to the Shade Garden.
• Transplanted some Mexicali Rose from the Boardwalk Gardens to the round bed in the Infinity Garden that has been empty forever.  The deck is finished, and it has created an enclosed area between the Infinity Garden and the deck that has the potential of being very charming.  I need that bed to have things growing in it to complete the look. 
• Dead headed in the Star Garden.
• Thinned zinnia seedlings that planted over the last several weekends.
• Weeded in the Star Garden and mulched in the bare spots I created.  If I don't mulch, the weeds are back in a matter of days.  Everything grows so quickly in the summer.
• My husband and I swam in the pool for a long time on Sunday. 
• The gingers are about to bloom.  That's always a pretty spectacle.  I have them growing along the Boardwalk, in the Star Garden, in the Shade Garden, and in the Infinity Garden. 
• The armadillos are back, digging up everything, leaving plants gasping in the sun.