This is White By The Gate Camellia. It has a very long bloom season. It blooms for about 4 weeks in the winter. It is the whitest white I have every seen in the garden. Beautiful.
- Last week I ordered a stand with a grow light and a heating mat. I bought 2 seed starting flats (each of them has 72 peat pots). Before we left for Burton I planted some thyme, chives, pink coneflower, and white swan coneflower seeds in the peat pots and set up my grow light and heating mat. I put the light on a timer so that it is on for bout 13 hours a day. I only seeded one of the flats because I have seeds coming in the mail. Three seed flats can fit under the light stand, so I will buy one more seed flat. I ordered Panorama Mix bee balm, Gruppenblau salvia, Anise Hyssop, and Cheyenne Spirit Coneflower seeds to plant in the flats. I have tried to grow seeds inside in peat pots before with no luck. But this year I'm really doing it right with a grow light and a heating mat. In the long run it will save a lot of money.
- Saturday I cleaned house while it rained all day. Vacuumed the whole house, mopped everywhere, put down floor shine, vacuumed the base boards, above the door frames, the vents, cleaned the kitchen cabinets, cleaned the bathrooms, dusted, cleaned all the glass tables, etc.
- While it was raining I fertilized one of my banana shrubs behind the house. It was looking kind of yellow.
- Took a long nap.
- Sunday morning I woke up to the sound of three gun shots. Bert killed a skunk by the barn.
- We took a walk around the perimeter of the property.
- Yesterday Bert went into Giddings and bought a huge bag of sugar. I'm going to have to feed the bees a few times this winter. Last spring was very hard on bees because it rained almost ever day. They don't forage in the rain. A few feedings will get them through the winter.
- Fed the bees. I dissolved sugar into water with a one to one ratio (I eye-balled it) and poured it into a feeder that I set on top of the supers.
- I turned over most of the beds in the Vegetable Garden so that the grass can begin to rot. I can see that I will have to do it more than one time in order for all the grass to be turned under and rot.
- Spent some time on the Boardwalk cutting back Mexicali Rose stems. Mexicali Rose grows many long, single stems about 4 feet tall. All the leaves drop off in the winter. They look pretty interesting in the winter with their skeletal structure, actually. But they take away from all the Spanish Bluebells that are beginning to emerge. I have about 500 bluebells growing along the Boardwalk, and I didn't go to that much trouble just to have them obscured by the dormant Mexicali Rose! The bluebells go dormant in the summer just when the Mexicali Rose starts to get really lush. They are good companions as long as the Mexicali doesn't inhibit the bulbs from emerging. I think if I could reverse time and never have planted one plant, it would be Mexicali. It is unbelievably invasive. But it's here now so I will work to control it.
- Weeded in the Orchard.
- Chased Rocky around for a while. He likes to take one of my gloves and have me chase him around trying to grab it from his mouth. It's our little game.
- Cut back a couple of Castor plants. One of them was casting shade and crowding out one of my dwarf flowering almond shrubs.
- Transplanted Moss Verbena seedlings growing in paths to various beds in the Rose Garden.
- I saw a huge pile of earth next to one of my roses, pushed there by voles as they dig new tunnels. This newest tunnel they dug was the result of water that I poured down their tunnels last weekend. So I ran water throughout the area and mushed down the earth to collapse their newest tunnel because if they create a den around my rose roots they will kill the rose.
- Headed home about 4.
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