Weekend at the Farm August 17 - 19, 2018

Arrived on Friday morning.

• Friday.  I went straight to work in the Rose Garden watering and pulling weeds.  I also dug up the dead Belinda's Dream and turned the soil so that I could get all the Dayflower weed, my sworn enemy.  I spent some hours there working.  It was hot, but it's been worse.  I crawled into the Noisette bed and pulled Dayflower weed.  I began cutting away at the dead Lady Banks rose which was a sad task - I can't believe I lost her.  It is intertwined amongst the bed springs of an old bed, and it will be a chore getting her extracted from that.
• As is par for the course, some of the Mexican Torch flowers have toppled over in the Star Garden, so I hauled them away.  But the main part of the work was done on Sunday.
• I noticed that we have had a big needle drop off the pine trees near the Rose Garden.  I will rake them up this weekend and mulch in the Orchard if I can summon the strength.
• Saturday, up with the sun and after a quick cup of coffee I headed outside.  
• The Orchard was my first stop.  I brought my long leather rose pruning gloves, a rake, loppers, clippers and the cadet. My main goal was to clean out the dead canes from the blackberry beds. It's a chore I hate, but very necessary.  Blackberries grow on one year old canes, and after the fruit they die.  I was out there from 7:00 until about 11:30.  I cut out old canes from my four small beds of blackberries and the big one.  I carted four heaping loads of debris  to the woods and dumped it.  I weeded a lot as well.  I pulled vines out of the back blackberry bed.  There is a vine that comes back every year (because I always end up pulling it out after it sets seed - just can't get around to it in a timely fashion  for some reason).  And there are Poke Salad plants growing in the big bed (unfortunately), so I cut them out.  There is also a non-fruiting wild grape vine that insists on coming back every year despite my determined effort to eradicate it, so I pulled all of that out of the bed.  I pulled up spent zinnias and threw the seed heads into the bed.  The zinnia seeds that I threw on the ground when I cleaned out the bed where my avocado tree will eventually be planted have all sprouted.  I should have a good show in the fall.  Finally, I drove the cadet  over to where the pine needles were and raked up a truckload of them,  I spread them over all the beds I cleared out.  I didn't get the big bed finished, that will have to wait for another time.
• I went to the Vegetable Garden next.  It was a mess because all the Mexican Sunflowers (Tithonia) had toppled over under their own weight (which they do every year).  I topped a lot of them hoping they will get bushy.  I should have paid closer attention to them.  Fall is their bloom time, and I coaxed them along all summer, I don't want to lose all of them now!  They are the best butterfly magnets that I've ever grown.  I loaded the cadet twice with debris and dumped it in the woods.  I pulled lots of weeds and pulled up lots of spent zinnias.  I battled all the way to the back of the Vegetable Garden - the sunflowers were a massive mess - until I reached the armadillo hole.  There is an armadillo that has built a den that leads right into the Vegetable Garden.  He has rooted around in every bed and made a huge mess.  I wanted to block the hole with a big rock, but I was so exhausted from the work and the heat that I couldn't face the effort.  Tomorrow is another day.
• Sunday. I went out to the Rose Garden and mulched in all the areas where I pulled weeds on Friday.  The mulch pile is right next to the Rose Garden, so it was easy to load up the wheel barrow a half dozen times or so and mulch all the cleaned-up areas.  Pulled more weeds, but I didn't want to get bogged down in the Rose Garden because the Star Garden was my goal.
• I topped all my Mexican Sunflowers in the Star Garden.  Basically that means I cut about two to three feet right off the top of all of them to keep them from toppling over.  They grow to about 8 feet tall if they are not aggressively pinched back - which I failed to do this summer.  They sort of look like stick soldiers right now, but I expect them to leaf out and bloom in time for the butterfly onslaught in September.  Hauling away all those pieces of plants was a big job because it made for a lot of debris.  I also did lots of weeding.  And I took hedge trimmers and indiscriminately chopped away at anything leaning into the paths.  Then I raked it all up.  Deadheaded my Rudbeckia Goldsturm.  Major improvement.
• Next, I went to the back path to lay down chicken wire on top of the adjacent beds.  I documented most of that in my Snake in a Bucket posting.  From a work perspective, I weeded the beds, loaded the cadet with mulch and covered the area with mulch, then snipped the chicken wire so that it fit the area (around plants and bird bath), then hammered down the chicken wire with stakes.
• Showered and drove in to Brenham to get a new battery for the Mini Cooper.  It was dead on Saturday evening when we tried to drive it in to Round Top for dinner.  Then headed home to Houston.  Bert stayed to let the workers in on Monday for the crushed granite repair.