Weekend at the Farm October 28 - 30, 2016

Arrived Thursday evening for a long weekend. Went to JW's for dinner.  Invited the family to come on Sunday.  Mom, Dad, Blake and Sam, and Amy, Josh, and Koy were able to make it.  I'm so glad I got a chance to show them the butterflies!

• Friday morning I pulled up about 4 feet of purple trailing lantana.  It spreads pretty aggressively and had taken over a lot of valuable real estate.  I spread my wildflower seeds in its place and mulched along the edge of the path.
• I pulled up all the faded Ageratum next to my Gruss an Achaan rose, mulched and spread wildflower seed in an area I left un-mulched.
• Next I went to my Rose Edge garden and raked away the leaves so that I left two wide rows.  Last year I filled the entire area with fallen leaves in order to suppress the weeds.  It has remained like that since last winter and remained pretty weed-free.  I seeded it with wildflower seeds.  I will plant some daffodil bulbs in there as well (I ordered 500 bulbs this year that have not yet arrived.), and there are daffodils already planted there. 
• Saturday morning I mulched.  I loaded the cub cadet several times with mulch and spread mulch in the Circle gardens.  All the Philippine Lily seed heads are dried and open, so I spread Philippine Lily seeds across all the mulch and scratched them in. Still lots of seed left to spread!
• I also spent some time in the Vegetable Garden mulching.
• Tied up some canes of my Peggy Martin rose onto the gate I have it trained on.

Torch Mexican Sunflower October 23, 2016

 Every year my Mexican Sunflower grows up out of my mulch pile and in other places here and there in my Vegetable Garden.  It gets about 15 feet tall and then timber - over it goes.  Laying on the ground it blooms its heart out every fall.  I haven't figured out a way to keep it upright.  It is an unruly mess which I don't mind when it grows outside the garden, and it attracts butterflies like crazy.

Zinnias in the Orchard October 23, 2016

Weekend at the Farm October 22 - 23, 2016

This is a seed head of amaranth.

Arrived Friday evening, Bert was already here.  I left early Sunday to go to Sam's birthday party.  He is into Spiderman so I got him a Spiderman shirt and shoes.

• This is the time of year when you think the days cannot get prettier yet every weekend is prettier than the last one.  The butterflies are amazing again.
• My Torch Mexican Sunflowers are in full bloom.  They are very colorful.  The butterflies are all over them.  The Whitestriped Longtails have finally showed up.  They are mostly brown, and they have a prominent white stripe across their wings and long narrow tails.  They are very distinctive-looking.  There are some small orange butterflies all around, but they move so fast that I cannot see if they have any markings.  The orange color is brighter than the Gulf Fritillaries and they are smaller with about a one inch wingspan.
•  I worked most of the morning in the Vegetable Garden.  I pulled up all the beans - I can't believe they lasted all summer - and a lot of the Tabasco pepper plants. I mulched a few of the 4 x 4 beds and both of the 2 x 16 beds to keep the weeds down.  I probably won't plant anything in most of the beds.  I added some compost to one of the 2 x 16 beds and planted 3 cabbage plants and one collard green plant.  
• I planted a mustard green in a pot and put it in the Star Garden, and I amended the soil and planted 2 more collards and one more mustard in the Star Garden beds.  Mustard greens and collards are such pretty plants.  I think they are very decorative.
• I found some Bright Lights Swiss Chard and some Cilantro in my seed box, so I sowed it in the Vegetable Garden.
• Throughout the day I spot watered in the Rose Garden with my low-flow sprinkler.  The Rose Garden looks absolutely fantastic.  I have gotten rid of most of my Ox Eye daisies so that other perennials and annuals can make their mark.  The zinnias are attracting butterflies.  So pretty.  I stayed in the Rose Garden most of the afternoon just moving the sprinkler and enjoying the weather and the butterflies.
• I mulched several beds in the Greenhouse Gardens.  
• My Night Blooming Jasmine is in full bloom.  I sat outside Friday night and Saturday night just breathing in the night air.  What an unforgettable smell, yet it is difficult to describe.  I don't know of another smell that I can compare it to.
• Before I left Sunday morning I sprayed my roses with fungicide.

Butterflies

 This is Julia.  Her right wing is a little tattered, she is still pretty.  The underside of her wings have no markings.

 Above, I think this is a Painted Lady.

 Above, a pretty little Sulphur.

 Above, this is a little Skipper of some kind. 

Above, a couple of Gulf Frittilaries on a zinnia.  The undersides of their wings are very pretty.

Pretty Illustris Colocasia Along the Boardwalk

Weekend at the Farm October 15 - 16, 2016

We arrived about 6:30 on Friday evening.  We drove in to Round Top for dinner.

• Bert and Ray went fishing, so Bert was up and out of the house by 6 on Saturday morning.  It rained during the night and everything was wet and shiny when I took my first stroll around the place at 7.
• I cut back my Pringle Aster first thing.  It's not blooming anymore and it crowds out my Gruss an Achaan and my Butterfly roses.
• I dug up some iris and reset them.  My recollection is that the iris underneath my Almond Verbena is Galactic Gold.  It will never bloom underneath that dense canopy.  I moved about 6 to the front bed where they will get plenty of sun.  I also dug up 4 or so Clyde Redmond iris and  moved them to the bed around the old dead tree in the Rose Garden.  I already have a bunch of Clyde Redmond planted there.
• I spent a couple of hours raking out the Ehrlicheer bed, smoothing out the soil (damn armadillos) and spreading mulch.  I transplanted some Ox Eye Daisies that were too close to the edge of the bed.  It looks really good.  I spread some red corn poppies and Larkspur in an area that I didn't mulch.
• I spent the rest of the morning mulching an iris bed.  There are lots of Philippine Lily seedlings mixed in there.  Weeding and cleaning it up before I laid down the mulch was painstaking.  And putting down the mulch around the iris without covering up the rhizomes with too much mulch - they don't like their backs covered up - and mulching around the seedlings was an effort!  I re-set a lot if iris that were growing up against the edges of the bed.  Most of them I planted right back in the same bed, and some I took to the Rose Garden and planted there.
•  Next I cleaned out the bed with the Harlequin Glorybower.  There are lots of iris in there as well.  Same thing as above - I re-set some iris so they weren't growing up against the bed edges and mulched.  I spread some Foxglove seed under the Glorybower. 
• Today was a red-letter day for butterflies.  All of the Gulf Fritillaries were out - zillions of them - and the Sulphurs and the zillions and zillions of little brown skippers, but I spotted a Julia and a Zebra Longwing.  Very exciting.  This is the first Julia I've seen all year.  I recall seeing a one-time spotting of a Zebra Longwing some months ago.  The butterfly activity in the Star Garden and the Rose Garden is highly entertaining right now.
• Sunday morning, slept until 8:30!
• I did some additional mulching around Fortune's Double rose and around the edges of that corner of the Rose Garden.  Fortune's Double is a once-blooming climbing rose with copper colored flowers.  It is extremely thorny, so you don't want weeds to accumulate underneath it.  I planted it in the farthest corner of the Rose Garden where no one would have to walk near it.  I left a small bare spot and seeded it with wildflower seeds.  I also seeded the box where my Ballerina rose is planted just adjacent to Fortune's Double.
• This year I bought the following seeds:  Red Drummond Phlox, California Poppy, Rocket Larkspur, Foxglove, Red Corn Poppies, Corn Poppies, and Golden Wave Coreopsis.
• Next I made my way to the bed where I planted five or so plugs of Homestead Purple Verbena.  I mulched around the edges of the bed, loosened the soil around the verbena and sowed some wildflower seeds.  
• I sowed seeds here and there in spots where all my seeds could get water this week from the same sprinkler.  
• Next I made my way to the Long Border.  I mulched the middle section of the Long Border around the Madam Antoine Mari rose.  It's pretty shady there, so in the area I left with no mulch I seeded it with Foxglove.  In the top section of the Long Border I scraped away the mulch in rows and seeded with various wildflower seeds.  This is a new process for me.  In past years I have seeded the entire area, and it becomes so weedy that I can't keep up.  This time there are only narrow rows, where my seeds are planted, that are un-mulched.  We will see how this goes. 
• The last thing I did today was cut back my trailing purple lantana that grows along the edge of my row of La Marne roses.  I mulched the areas that I exposed after shearing them.  Then I scraped away mulch about a foot wide and about 8 feet long, loosened the soil and seeded the area with my wildflower seeds.
• Oh yes, then I sprayed herbicide on the driveway, in the Orchard, the Rose Garden, and the Star Garden.
• Headed home about 5.