Time at the Farm June 27 - 28, 2021

 

I drove up by myself mid-morning on Sunday after the Airbnb folks left.  Took Monday as vacation.  The company announced that we would continue every other week in the office through Labor Day.  

• I spent what was left of the morning watering in the Rose Garden and the Water Garden.
• I gathered seed pods from my Peace Pipe nicotiana and spread them here there and everywhere.
• I staked them also.  They were leaning over into the paths.
• Weeded.
• Sprayed herbicide on the driveway and in the Star Garden.  The purslane is coming up everywhere.  
• I pulled up all but one tomato plant in the Vegetable Garden.  Weeded and cleaned up.  I threw everything over the fence to be picked up later.  I didn't sow any seed.  The seedlings from seed that I sowed last weekend were all eaten.  I will sow more.  That's okay.  I always over-buy seeds.
• It began to rain, and I took advantage of the cooling down of the temperature and weeded and cleaned out beds in the Star Garden for about an hour.  I was soaking wet, but it's better than being incredibly hot and sweaty.  I made another huge pile of debris that I will have to haul off tomorrow.  
• An armadillo dug up the burr oak given to my by Connie that I planted last weekend.  I knew that was a risk.  I had filled the hole many times with water before I planted the little tree.  Armadillos can smell that good wet earth and they seek it out.  It lay gasping on the ground, I don't know for how long it lay there without any water, but I stuck it back in the ground and surrounded it with chicken wire.  I hope it survives. 
• So, so much to do.  July and August are grim months.  So hot.  You look around and don't know how you will keep up with the weeds and the rampant growth.  It can be very discouraging.  Then along comes September and things settle down.  The temperature cools off (not that you can notice it, but the days get shorter and the nights get longer) and you find the strength and renewed vigor to get it under control again. 
• Monday.  I dug up 8 or so Fruity Pebbles lantana from paths and potted them up.  It's too hot to stick them straight in the ground after uprooting them.  I'll keep them in a shady spot until fall and plant them in the ground then.
• I worked in the Rose Garden for about 4 hours pulling up spent brown eyes and cutting Verbena on a Stick down to the ground.  I've found it resents being cut to the ground, but it's all flopping over.  Even though it is still blooming very prettily, I was trying to organize the garden, and that stuff looks messy.  I cut all the tops off and threw them in the garden to reseed next year.  I cut the moss verbena back.  I probably should have just pulled it up, but I don't have anything to replace it with, and I hate bare ground.  Weeded out lots of day flower. Yuck.  Barricaded a few places with chicken wire.  The armadillos are out in force.  It won't help, but it makes me feel better.
• I weeded in the Daffodil Border and the Rose Edge border.  I shouldn't have to weed in those beds because I keep them completely covered in leaves from the fall.  But last fall I used all the leaves I raked in the wild parts of the Star Garden.  
• I weeded in the Long Border.  Pulled up ageratum that was crowding my altheas.  
• In for lunch.  Then right back out.  
• I worked in the Dining Room bed for quite a while cutting the iris greenery down low so that the rudbeckia has room to shine.  It's about to bloom, and the iris greenery is really tall.  I also did a lot of weeding in there.  And I pulled up all the ageratum that was growing in there.  It will really take over, and that bed is supposed to be two roses, iris, phlox and rudbeckia.  That's it, nothing more.  Well, there are a few ferns in there and a couple of Snow rose shrubs (that are cut all the way to the ground after the February freeze and still haven't really come back).  Also, I have let wild petunia get a little crazy in there and I need to yank it all out.  For as stingy as that stuff blooms, it sure does manage to throw off a lot of seed.  There are also some small milkweed plants in there that came up from last year's seeds.  So, suffice to say that I needed to clear some stuff out!
• I wandered out to the Rose Garden to gather up some of my tools, and there was an armadillo digging in one of my beds!  I yelled at it, "Get out of here you little bastard!", but it didn't seem inclined to move along.  I clapped my hands and yelled some more.  No fear.  So I threw a rock at it, and I hit it.  When armadillos get startled they jump straight up in the air.  So it jumped straight up, but it didn't run off. I threw a big piece of bark at it, and it jumped straight up, but it still did not run off.  I threw one more piece of wood at it, and it finally wandered off.  That was the darndest thing.  No fear at all.  Such strange-looking creatures.
• I cut the tall seed heads from all my columbine in the Greenhouse Gardens.  Looks like voles are under the biggest bed and steadily eating my columbine because I've lost half a dozen or so of my large Hinckley columbine plants.
• Sprayed herbicide in the Vegetable Garden.
• Headed home to Houston about 4:00.