Note the bee in the picture above. These great big bumble bees are INSANE for my blooming Obedient Plant. They have been crawling all over it the entire day
Ashley and Allen came up with some friends and hung by the pool all day on Saturday.
- Friday afternoon I drove by the Nixon Lake house on the way in and saw that someone had come in and mowed the yard. I could see red shrimp plant blooming. I wanted some of that shrimp plant, in fact, I've had my eye on it for a couple of years. So I drove all the way to the house, changed out of my work clothes, changed into my garden clothes, and drove back to the house. I tried hard to dig up some clumps, and I was moderately successful, but there were years of dead debris crowding it. And I was nervous digging around in someone's yard. I left with a half dozen clumps of bearded irises and two clumps of shrimp plant. When I got home I immediately trimmed off the tops of the shrimp plant clumps and planted them in the Greenhouse Gardens. I realized that I could probably root all the clippings I removed. Shrimp plants are very knobby at the leaf margins. Knobby stems are good candidates for rooting in water. And sure enough, I put them in water and they are looking really sprite. Hopefully this fall I will be able to plant them all over the place. Shrimp plant likes shade.
- Planted the bearded irises I dug up from the Nixon Lake house in the front flowerbed.
- I haven't been here for two weeks, and the place needed a LOT of work.
- Spent a lot of Saturday morning in the Rose Garden pulling up spent Black Eyed Susans and tall weeds. Made a huge pile of debris. Cut away branches of Harlequin Glory Bower that were blocking the path.
- Also spent part of Saturday morning pulling weeds in the Orchard. All the weeds that I pulled two weeks ago grew back wherever I did not put down grass clippings or leaf mulch. So I pulled them up again and spread grass clippings over the loose soil.
- Saturday - Cut away as much as I could that was blocking the paths in the Star Garden - Almond Verbena, Zinnias, Verbena Bonariensis, Hyacinth Bean Vine, on and on and on.
- Saturday I also spent time in the Vegetable Garden. A lot of the lower branches of the Mexican Torch Flowers had sheared away from the main trunk. There are about 6 plants that came up from last year's stray seeds. They are about 20 feet tall. The lower branches get so heavy they just tear away. But they don't die, so I cut them. Trimmed the Marigolds and the arugula. Trimmed the Birdhouse Gourd vine. Pulled weeds.
- Also Saturday morning, before the young folks arrived, I shook out the rugs, vacuumed the whole house, cleaned the toilets and the kitchen sink.
- Watered here and there. It's pretty dry, there has been no rain here. I was hoping, since we have had good rain in Houston, that it would look good here. But alas, no.
- Sunday morning I worked in the Rose Garden again. I haven't been in there working for almost a month, and it was a mess. I hand watered and almost all my roses. I didn't get Soncy or Blush Noisette watered. And I wanted to water the cannas in the Long Border, but it got too hot to be out there. The voles have tunneled around the roots of all the roses, so I spent a lot of time mushing down the mud with my rubber boots. I was trying to cover the roots with dirt. I pulled tons of weeds. I used the weed eater to cut away weeds in various places. When I was finished with the weed eater I was covered in burs that flew up on my clothes. I trimmed back some of the roses in preparation for the fall flush of flowers. I couldn't get to all of them, too hot. I also fertilized all the roses with an organic granular. The water and the fertilizer are my hope for a pretty fall.
- Sunday I sprayed herbicide in the Orchard, the Vegetable Garden, the Rose Garden, and the Star Garden.
- I was pretty exhausted after that. My hands are covered with rose stickers under the skin, and I'm sun burned. Good weekend.
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