One of the few plants of mine that didn't get frozen off during the freeze a couple of days ago is this pretty artemisia that I got from Connie Gwyn. I love it. It is so pretty. It is growing in my mom's garden which is an all white garden.
I took Thursday vacation and arrived Wednesday evening. Bert was already here.
- Thursday. Stuffed and marinated a boliche for New Years Eve dinner.
- I worked in the Rose Garden for a couple of hours mulching and weeding. The voles ate almost every one of my Naples onion bulbs that I planted by my Noisette rose. The bulbs had all popped up, and now I only have a few in that area. And you can see the little loose soil circles where they pulled them down into their tunnels.
- I filled the cadet with soil and drove down to the Orchard to work. I raked everywhere and dumped the leaves under the blackberry bramble to discourage weeds. Sprayed herbicide on all the paths in the Orchard. The winter weeds have really come on. It's pretty warm today, I'm in shorts and a t-shirt, so the herbicide should be effective. I focused on one bed down there and weeded it and spread mulch. I pulled weeds here and there. I cut some dead blackberry canes. When the mulch was all gone I drove up to get more mulch and it was already 3:30. I couldn't believe it. The Orchard needs some more work. All the beds except the ones that I have done over the last several weeks need to be cleaned out and mulched. Lots of winter weeds. I take some care trying to save my poppy seedlings, so mulching can be a painstaking effort.
- I made a pot of Spanish bean soup, used cabbage from the garden and bay leaf from my tree.
- I spent some time in the Rose Garden raking. I got most of it raked. I dumped all the leaves in the Rose Edge and Daffodil Borders. The deer are really bringing me down. I have some ideas (all of them are ugly-looking) - the best idea would be a deer fence around the whole thing. That would solve my armadillo problem and my deer problem. But that would be expensive. And probably no one would want to do it because it's such a small space. It has been my experience that these companies don't want to waste their time with small projects.
- I hated for the day to end. I was having such a nice and happy day.
- Friday. New Years Eve with Mom and Dad, Max, Julia, Luke, Koy, Cleo, Nancy and Lisa. Another year no one will miss because of Covid. But, I was able to spend a lot of time here in the country, and I loved it. All my family made it through in tact - what more could I ask for?
- Saturday. Black eyed peas for luck, family headed home about 3:00.
- Sunday. We had a hard freeze. We were in shorts and short sleeved shirts on Saturday to 28 degrees on Sunday. Very cold all day.
- I cut all the leaves off my Hoja Santa stalks and layered them in the leaves in my compost piles. The freeze did them in, so I made the leaves useful.
- I raked 3 truckload of pine needles and used them all in the Orchard. I pulled weeds and cleared out beds underneath the grape vines and underneath my biggest blackberry bramble then spread thick layers of pine needles in the cleared sections. I didn't get finished by a long shot because this a big garden area with big flowerbeds in it. But I did enough work that I felt pretty good about it.
- I filled the truck twice with mulch and mulched various areas in the Orchard - around the Celeste fig tree and around some cannas and lantanas.
- I worked until about 2:30 and knocked off for some lunch.
- Back outside and worked in the Orchard until 5:30. I loaded another truckload of mulch and mulch in various places. Then I raked up a load of leaves into the truck and dumped them into one of the blackberry bramble beds. Weeded, weeded, weeded.
- A good day in the Orchard. For some reason, it is the garden I dread the most. I always attack the work with some distaste. But once I get a handle on it (I'm not finished, but it looks good down there) I feel a great deal of satisfaction.
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