At the Farm During the Pandemic January 4 - 10, 2021

 

This large camellia shrub grows in the Shade Garden.  I don't know the name of it.  I dug it up from our house in Houston many years ago and planted it here.  It was so scraggly then.  It's beautiful now.  These 2 blooms are really early.  It doesn't really burst forth with its blooms until very late winter. 

• Arrived Monday evening after work.
• Tuesday.  Worked.
• I moved 3 Verbena Bonariensis from paths in the Rose Garden into beds.
• In my quest to find places to move my beautiful purple cannas, I decided to dig up some bi color iris in the Copper Canyon Bed that have never bloomed.  They have grown into massive clumps, and they are taking up valuable real estate in the Star Garden.  I dug them up and dumped them in the woods.  I won't miss them.  Then I moved about 6 big clumps of cannas into their spot.  There are still 3 or 4 big clumps of cannas left to move! 
• Wednesday.  Worked.
• I moved the last of the cannas to various beds.  Now I have a few wild onions, a lantana, 3 autumn sages, a salvia and some oxblood lilies left to move.  Then that bed will be completely gone, and I will have made a large space in the Star Garden.
• Thursday.  Worked.
• I dug up the wild onions and the Oxblood Lilies and set them on the porch to handle later.  I moved the lantana to another bed in the Star Garden.  I moved the 3 autumn sages to a sunny bed in the Greenhouse Gardens that can get pretty thirsty.  They are drought tolerant.  And I moved the Mystic Spires salvia over just a few feet.  
• I scooped up all the soil and hauled three wheelbarrows full of soil from that bed over into one of the new beds I'm building in my mother's garden.  All done.  Bert just needs to saw off the ends of the cedar edging that formed the bed, and the open space will be done.  Well, almost done.  I will need to cover the area with decomposed granite, or I'm thinking of stepping stones with granite in between the stones.
• Friday.  Worked.
• I planted all the wild onion in front of the Endless Summer hydrangeas next to the Greenhouse.  I planted all the Oxblood lilies in the Rose Edge Border.
• I have many dozen OxBloods growing in a bed in the Star Garden where they are not showing to advantage.  I stuck a shovel in there to pull some out.  A big tangled mass of bulbs and daylily roots came up.  I separated them, re-buried the day lily roots, and now I have 15 or so more bulbs to plant.  I will put them in the Rose Edge Border as well.
• Bert repaired the bed edging around the bed that I removed.
• Saturday.  First thing, I went out and planted the Oxblood lily bulbs I dug out the day before.  I planted them along the edge of the Rose Edge Border.  I got enthusiastic about that and dug up 20 or so more of them in the Star Garden.  I planted them in the Rose Edge Border as well.
• And finally I dug up a dozen or so more of them and planted them along the walkway into the Rose Garden.  I planted them on the side of the walkway that is in the woods.
• I dug up several Verbena Bonariensis plantlets growing in paths and transferred them to various gardens.  Dug up several ox eye daisies growing in paths and moved them to gardens.  And I moved several clumps of woodland violets that had spread into paths and moved them to the Medicine Garden.  The flowers are edible, so that garden seemed appropriate.
• I cut back all the purple trailing lantana in the Rose Garden to create visibility to the climbing rose (Peggy Martin) that I have trained on that low fence.  I cut away some canes that were going in the wrong direction and tied canes against the fence.  Peggy Martin is a spring bloomer.  That will be very pretty this spring.
• I raked leaves for a long time and dumped many wheelbarrows of leaves into the Daffodil Border, the Rose Edge Border and the wild part of the Star Garden.  They break down into good leaf compost and keep the weeds down.  Fall raking is very important to my gardening regimen.  I'd be swimming in a sea of weeds if I didn't mulch with my oak leaf drop.  
• I cleaned out the leaves amongst my cannas in the Long Border.  I remember shaking lots of Verbena Bonariensis seeds into the Long Border right in that spot last spring, but there are no seedlings. Maybe some will show up now that I've removed all that leaf mulch.
• I trimmed lots of moss verbena in the Rose Garden.  I'm not quite ready for it to spill over into the paths.
• I drove up to Papescapes to see about buying some stepping stones for the area I just cleared in the Star Garden, but they were closed.  Mom and Pop shops have irregular hours.  Maybe I'll try again on Monday.
• I had a packet and part of a packet of calendulas in my seed box that I sowed in the Rose Garden.  I think they will germinate despite being January.  But if they don't, it was an inexpensive experiment.
• Bert brought 4 green edging strips back with him from town.  I finished outlining my mom's garden.  The bones are all there now.
• Sunday.  It snowed steadily all day.  I was not able to work, but the snow was lots of fun.