At the Farm During the Pandemic December 25, 2020 - January 3, 2021

 

This is White By The Gate camellia.  I think the flowers on this shrub are the clearest, purest white that I have ever seen in a white flower.

• Last weekend Christmas with the Bonassin family.  December 24th Christmas with the Stevenson family.  No Lopez folks attended due to the pandemic.  2020, please go away and never come back.
• Carol Montgomery, an amazing lady in our little community here, passed away on Christmas day at the age of 90.  So sad that she is suddenly gone, but can't help but think how lucky she is to leave this human earth - until the very end - independent  and strong.
• We have been gone for a week (arrived on Christmas morning), so first thing, I watered all the pots in the back.  And I watered all my young camellias.  I am fiercely guarding my precious camellias, I don't want to lose them.  I am already completely invested in them and already love them.
• I walked and walked and walked the gardens looking at every single wildflower seedling and plant with the greatest attention to detail.  And I walked my mother's garden (unfinished though it is) to see what I would do next and imagining what it would look like when it is finished.  The weather was lovely, and the robins were all around me, bathing in the bird baths and scratching in the leaves looking for insects.  I stayed outside until darkness forced me in.
• Saturday.  I worked outside all day.
• I raked 2 truckloads of pine needles and spread them under the blackberries in the Orchard.
• I raked many truckloads of leaves and made a big pile by the back fence of the Vegetable Garden.  I will use them throughout the summer to mix into my compost.
• I turned the compost piles.
• I pulled up lots of castor debris behind the Vegetable Garden .  Each of those stalks requires a bunch of tugs.  I pulled up about half of them.
• I spread some of the leaves in the unfinished part of the Star Garden.  And I spread some in the Rose Edge border.  
• I pulled up the trellis in the Star Garden where I had some morning glories growing.  I gathered the seed and tossed them on the ground next to the arbor at the entrance to the Star Garden.  In that place I planted 3 Kordana miniature roses.  Amy gave them to me for Christmas.  They are red.  I've never grown miniatures before.  I'm intrigued.  
• I dug up 4 large clumps of purple red cannas in the Star Garden and moved them to the Long Border.  I intend to clear out that part of the bed and cover it with decomposed granite.  It's too crowded in that part of the garden.  You can't move through it without having plants rub against you.  I still have probably a half dozen more clumps of cannas to move.  No idea where I'm going to put them.  These cannas are very beautiful  I want to keep them. 
• Sunday.  I spent several hours cleaning out the Vegetable Garden.  I cut down all the asparagus dead vegetation and the sugarcane.  I raked the paths.  I spent some time gathering Grandpa Ott seed from the morning glory remnants and throwing them over the fence into the Hot Border.  I'm hoping next spring the seed will germinate and cover the fence.  We'll see.  
• I watered the top section of the Meadow.
• I moved two more clumps of cannas from the Star Garden to the Long Border.  There are some Oxblood lilies growing amongst the cannas, a complete waste since the cannas overtake them.  I dug up about 30 of them and moved them to other places in my gardens where they will show to better effect.  I moved some to the beds that sit adjacent to the garden I am building for my mom.  And I moved a bunch of them to the Rose Edge Border.  I think I will move the rest of them once I have amended the beds in my mom's garden.  There is also another good spot in the Rose Edge Border where they would display very nicely.  Not sure yet what I will do.
• I took the loppers and my diesel / Remedy mix and cut down about 30 yaupon along the edge of the Meadow.  Those things will encroach upon the cleared land if I am not vigilant.  
• I raked 3 or 4 truckloads of leaves and piled them behind the Vegetable Garden.  
• Monday.  Worked.
• I took my poison and loppers into the Shade Garden and cut down some yaupons that were big around as my pinkie.  I've been meaning to get in there and do that for a while now, so - good for me!  There weren't a lot of them, but yaupon will take over if you don't watch out.  It looks really pretty in the Shade Garden right now.  The ferns have not been hit by the freeze yet, and they are so pretty and green.
• I poured water into my compost buckets.  One of them is infested with ants.  I read that it's not entirely bad for ants to be in the compost, but I can't use it if I can't touch it.  The article said to water the compost pile to get rid of the ants.  I tuned the piles again.
• Tuesday.  Worked.
• I shoveled a bunch of soil from my compost heap into an armadillo burrow next to my butterfly vine in the Star Garden.  I've done that several times before.  Armadillos keep coming back to the same spot year after year.
• I raked in the Rose Garden and dumped the leaves into the Daffodil Border and the Rose Edge Border.  I watered both borders.  The daffodils are coming up, so I'm giving them a little encouragement.  I fertilized the Daffodil Border a couple of weeks ago.  Both of those borders are completely mulched with leaves year round.  I don't grow anything in either border except the bulbs.
• I turned the compost piles again.  Take that ants!
• I gathered lots of seed off my Malabar spinach and dropped them on the ground around the front arbor.  
• Wednesday.  Worked.
• I moved a scraggly rosemary in the Long Border to another spot in the Long Border out of the way.  Then I dug up a clump of my purple cannas in the Star Garden and moved them into that space.
• In the Greenhouse Gardens I dug out some sweetspire that has not performed well for several years.  In its place I planted more purple cannas.  
• I dug up a hydrangea in the Star Garden that is getting too much sun and not enough water.  I moved it amongst the columbine in the Greenhouse Gardens.
• And I moved one of my agave growing in a pot into the spot where the hydrangea was.  The other agave in a pot by the pool, I moved to a spot in a bed where nothing was growing in the hinterlands of the Star Garden.
• I moved a copper canyon daisy in a pot by the pool over to the copper canyon bed in the Star Garden.  The other copper canyon in a pot looks dead, so I didn't bother with it.  But I watered it just in case.  I would have checked for green by scratching one of the branches, but I misplaced my scissors.
• Hunted (successfully) for my scissors.
• Watered in all my new transplants.  Moving all those plants around has been on my To Do list for a long time, so good for me.
• I spread tall poppy mallow seed in the small section of the Rose Garden where I have some yellow daffodils planted.  I can't recall what kind of daffodils they are, I think St. Keverne.
• Thursday.  Worked.  New Years Eve.  I babysat Blake's kids, so I met her halfway and brought them here to spend the night.
• We had some really good rain during the night and throughout the day.  Finally. 
• Something fun that happens each fall is the pleasant surprise that I experience when I see bulbs popping up that I forgot I planted the year before.  It's happened twice so far.  I had completely forgotten that I planted several dozen Lycoris (Hurricane Lilies) in the Rose Edge Border.  I remember planting a bunch of paperwhites in there last year but I had completely forgotten about the Lycoris.  The other pleasant surprise was in the Greenhouse Gardens.  I planted some paperwhites in between the hydrangeas.  What is funny about that is that I sowed Ox Eye daisy seed in there this fall because I thought that space was too bare in there.  Then up pop the paperwhites right on top of the seedlings.  Obviously last year I had the same idea but with different plants!
• Friday.  New Years Day.  The kids and I played all day, and then I drove them halfway and passed them over to Blake.
• Saturday.  I decided to clear out the Long Border and sow some of the seeds I still had in my seed box.  
• I raked and in many cases hand scraped / gathered leaves and pine needs from around the plants in the Long Border.  My long term goal is to have no space in there for seeds.  Last winter and spring I planted many crinums in there.  I have some perennial salvia, several varieties of cannas and crinums, two climbing roses, a verbena ground cover, a couple of lantanas (not sure how they will perform when spring arrives), some rosemary, 3 varieties of altheas, cypress vine (that comes back from seed every year), and an almond verbena.  But right now I still have space.  I'm expecting the cannas and crinums to spread and take up all the space, but that will take a couple of years.  After I cleared all the leaves and pine needles I punched the soil with the edge of a shovel to loosen the soil.  Then I spread handfuls (because I can't help myself - I crowd everything) of tall poppy mallow, clasping coneflower and black eyed Susans.
• I spent some time in my mother's garden turning the soil in the beds I have built.  Yesterday on the way home from dropping off the kids I stopped at Home Depot and bought 3 more green edging strips.  They only had 3 in stock or I would have purchased a few more.  I laid down the 3 green strips I bought.  And I pulled up some edging at the edge of where the garden used to end and re-set it to extend the bed.
• Bert cut down the huge almond verbena in the Long Border.  It will come up from the roots in the spring.  I've never cut that one down before, so it was huge.  It will bloom better next season on all its new growth.  That left a huge area in the Long Border with nothing growing, so I worked the soil and sowed zillions of seed (Clasping Coneflower and Black Eyes Susans).  Watered them in well.
• I raked quite a bit in the Greenhouse Gardens and dumped all the leaves behind the Vegetable Garden.  
• We met our new neighbors.  They just bought Pam and Eric's house.  Matt and Katy and their 3 kids Dash, Rory, and May.  Sweet family.
• Sunday.  Bert and I took a walk around the property.  It was a cold and sunny morning.
• I worked on my mom's garden for about an hour and a half.
• Turned the compost piles.
• Did lots of raking.  I dumped 2 wheelbarrows of leaves around the Mexican Buckeye in mom's garden.  And I dumped many wheelbarrows of leaves behind the Vegetable Garden.
• I walked all the gardens and enjoyed the beautiful weather.
• I watered the Mexican Buckeye that I surrounded with leaves so that they would mush down.  I watered my snowflakes in the Star Garden that are just beginning to appear.
• Headed to Houston around 3:00.