Last Weekend Before the Crawfish Boil April 7 - 8, 2018

A poppy from seeds that my aunt Maedell gave me many years ago.

Last weekend before the crawfish boil, so I stayed busy all weekend.  The painters finished painting and the interior and exterior look really good.

• So weird, but I was wandering around the Vegetable Garden and suddenly noticed that 4 of my tomato plants were completely gone.  The tomato cages were there but no plants.  I assume it was voles, and they pulled the entire plant into their tunnel.  But no hole, seemingly no disturbance in the soil.  Either that or someone came along and stole them.  (But that would be really paranoid to think that.)  Usually what I see the voles do is eat the plant roots.  I will come upon the top of a plant all wilted, lift it up and the plant is eaten right at the base of the plant where the stem enters the ground.  For the plant to be gone entirely is a new one for me.  Bert bought some more tomato plants on his way to the farm but he mistakenly bought cherry tomatoes.  Yuck.  Four cherry tomato plants.  But I planted them. 
• I took a walk in the Rose Garden when I arrived on Friday evening and found that leaf cutter ants had carried away half of one of my Ballerina roses.  I put down some poison. 
• I received 5 Mojito Colocasia in the mail from Brent and Becky's, so I planted those along the Boardwalk.  I spread mulch in the area also, and it looks very fine.  I planted four where the main grouping is planted, and I planted 1 where I began a new grouping last summer.
• It was really cold this weekend, but since it is the last weekend before the party I sprayed herbicide here and there.  Roundup doesn't work very well in cool weather, but I've run out of time.
• Bert and I spent time on Saturday and Sunday doing some cleanup in the meadow.  We worked together - he cut down unwanted plants (such as poke salad, beautyberry, nasty prickly vines, and yaupon) with his weed eater and I sprayed a 50 / 50 mix of Remedy and diesel oil on the cut.  He still thinks the meadow looks awful, but I will win the day.  These things take time.  It is a decade-long project and we are in year one.
• The cedar tri-pod in the Rose Garden was wonky, so Bret and I did some repairs on it.  We re-tied the rose canes on it.
• I spread manure on some of my roses in the Rose Garden.
• I removed all the dead debris from the shrimp plant bed in the Greenhouse Gardens.
• I removed the dead debris from the Turks Cap along the lower half of the Boardwalk Gardens.
• I spent half a day cleaning up the Medicine Garden area and I spread a bunch of mulch.
• I planted some of my beloved sedums in a pot and placed it in the Star Garden.  That night some animal dug everything out of the pot for some reason.  I planted it all again the next morning. 
• Weeded, weeded, weeded.
• Drove in to work on Monday morning.