Weekend at the Farm October 11 - 12, 2014

This is Banana Shrub. The flowers are about 2 inches, maybe less, across.  They have a very strong scent of ripe bananas.  The scent floats through the air, and you can smell it when you walk near the shrub, but it's not a strong scent when you put your nose to the bloom and breathe in.  Some flowers are strange like that, they smell so strong from a distance and hardly at all close up.  Nicotiana is like that to me as well.

Arrived Friday afternoon.  Napped for two hours.

• Friday night we put some sleeping bags in the back of the cub cadet , poured ourselves a nightcap, drove out to the road, and laid in the back and watched the stars for about an hour.  Really beautiful evening, a nice breeze and a clear sky.
• It was raining when we woke up on Saturday morning.  Laid in bed and listened to the rain on the roof.
• My Banana Shrub is blooming!  I am so excited about it.  This is the first time it has bloomed since I planted it.
• Since it was supposed to rain all day and all day tomorrow I decided to seed the long bed next to the Rose Garden with wild flowers.  I threw down seed of Blue Bonnets, Drummond Phlox, Flanders Poppy, Corn Poppy, and the rest of the Scarlet Flax left over from last year.  The rain will beat them down so they make good contact with the soil.
• Threw down organic fertilizer on all the gingers in the Circle Drive, the Medicine Garden, and the Shade Garden, the Bridal Wreath Shrubs, the Giant Ligularias in the Shade Garden, and the Debutante Camellia.
• I cut most of the seed heads of my wild Onion from my Houston house and spread them in various places in the Rose Garden.  Spread a lot of them around the Archduke Charles rose that is in front of the air conditioners.  Texas Wild Onion (as I refer to it, I don't know what the real name is) is an evergreen, onion-y smelling plant that has pretty white umbels in the spring and fall.  It is useful because it is evergreen and only gets about a foot tall (unless it is blooming).  Good front of the border plant.
• Sat on the front porch and then the back porch and watched the rain for a long time.
• Mopped the kitchen and vacuumed the whole house.
• Cut away salvia from the paths.  Cleared the paths as best I could.  
• Cleaned out the back bed in preparation for wildflower seeding.
• Cut back Indigo Spires so that the path wasn't blocked. 
• Cut away Hojo Santo so that the paths weren't blocked.  I was going to transplant some of the plantlets that had sprung up in the paths and build a new bed at the back of the house, but I decided no way! - this stuff is too invasive.  I don't want more.  I have it growing in two places in the Medicine Garden, and two places in the Star Garden.  That's enough.
• Spread leaf mulch in several places in the Star Garden.
• Threaded American Beauty Rose  branches through the rungs of its support.  
• Saturday evening I walked around and around and around with my husband talking about things we love, things we want to do, etc., wine glasses in hand.
• I noticed some hops growing on one of the hops vines my son gave me for Christmas.  Only two of the four vines survived the long, hot summer.  Hops are perennials, so hopefully the two I have will be in place for many years to come.
• Sunday morning drove into town  to meet the whole family for brunch at Brennan's to celebrate the October birthday girls.  Dove back to the farm afterwards.
• Sprayed herbicide on the fungus in the Orchard and the Vegetable Garden.  Sprayed a little in the Rose Garden until I ran out of spray. This fungus is disturbing me greatly.  I don't know how to eradicate it.  I am really stressed out about it.