Arrived about 4:30, Bert was already here. He put quarter rounds at the top and bottom of the baseboards around the entire house. A lot of work! Looks much better. Met with a painter as well. Rainy weekend.
- Friday afternoon as soon as I arrived I went straight out to the Orchard and begain pruning my muscadine grape vines. I worked until dusk, about two and a half hours. I made great progress, I probably only have another hour of pruning left. It's a lot of work for a grape arbor that I have not gotten a single grape from in the years I have been growing and pruning and growing and pruning. I have a new thought on how to handle my grape vines, though. I'm going to cut the green vines that hang low and start shooting out all over the place in the summer in an effort to try and minimize the shade that gets throw on the grapes. We'll see. You know you have a brown thumb when you can't get grapes off of muscadine grape vines...
- I got bitten by some mosquitoes while I was pruning my grape vines - mosquitoes already! The rain and the standing water that results has really brought them out.
- I walked around my Medicine and Star gardens all through the evening - strategizing and planning. I passed a very pleasant time walking and walking.
- Saturday. I bought some more stain to continue painting the Rose Garden fence, but it was too drizzly all weekend to paint.
- I spent several hours digging up thyme from the bed in the Star Garden where it had totally taken over. I transplanted 15 or so large plugs into the Kitchen Herb Garden. After that I just yanked out the rest of it.
- I planted 8 Inwood daylilies in the bed at the front of the Rose Garden. No sense in putting in a rose there because the Lady Banks will soon overtake it.
- I raked out the Long Border and fertilized all the salvias, roses, the Linleyanas, cannas, crinums, and Almond Verbena. That bed is going to need some mulch soon or it will get taken over by weeds. It looks really good right now though.
- I spent a long time in the Star Garden cutting away dead debris and fertilizing what I didn't get to last weekend - cutting back Black Mulhly grass, Firespike, gingers, Cigar Plant, salvia greggii, etc. I did some more raking and dumping the leaves in the edges of the Star Garden. I'm almost done cleaning out winter debris in the Star Garden. I still need to clean out the bed with the Copper Canyon daisies and the Senna tree.
- I pruned my two blue Vitex.
- I planted another Bears Breeches next to one I planted last week.
- I raked away the leaves around my Nikko Blue Hydrangeas and my Strawberry Bush in the Medicine Garden and spread fertilizer. I left the leaves all bunched up in the bed, I will get rid of those next weekend.
- I planted 2 Phlox Subulata as a ground cover in the area where the Four O'Clocks were that I dug up a couple weeks ago. I have always wanted to grow some of that. I plan to spread Cosmos seed in the rest of the area. That is not very good soil, and Cosmos won't bloom well if they are in rich soil, so that works out perfectly. I will have to work hard to keep the Four O'Clocks from coming back, there are already a hundred seedlings popping up.
- I pruned the two Marie Pavie roses in the bed by the dining room and fertilized them as well as the Pink Texas Phlox and Clyde Redmond Iris nearby. Both of the Marie Pavie roses have tip rooted. Next week I will dig at least one of them up and move it to the Rose Garden.
- Sunday. It rained throughout the day but I worked through it.
- I pulled up what was left of the dead Yuletide Camellia by the Greenhouse and planted a Bears Breeches.
- Raked out the bed on the side of the Greenhouse, cleared out a vine that was growing there, pulled out a dead plant (name escapes me right now). I dug up 2 Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow shrubs and put them into plastic pots. I intended to bring them to Houston and plant them at my house there, but I forgot to do it . I'll haul them home next weekend. The winters are just too cold in Burton to make them useful. They never bloom. I planted 3 Nikko Blue Hydrangeas in that bed. I found three small ones at Arbor Gate last week, only $10.00 apiece. That's a deal! I just need to be careful to keep them wet all summer, the root ball is small, so they will dry out easily. I mulched them really well.
- I raked the other beds in the Greenhouse Garden and took many wheel barrows full of leaves over to the compost pile.
- I mulched here and there in the Greenhouse Gardens.
- I planted four Spotted Dead Nettle 'Orchid Frost' in the shady part of the Star Garden by the shed. It is a ground cover and very pretty.
- In the area where I cleared out the thyme I planted three Stokes Aster Peachy's Pick. One of them I moved from the spot where I planted it several years ago, the other two I bought a couple of days ago. They will make a better show if they are massed together. Mulched around them and fertilized.
- I planted 4 purple Summer Jewel reseeding annual salvias in the Star Garden and one small purple greggii.
- I weeded for a long time and mulched the spots I weeded.
- I went down to the Orchard and finished pruning my grape vines.
- That's that, spent the night on Sunday and drove in to work on Monday morning.
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