West and West Herb gardens finished
On Monday morning I was up at 4:45AM and got my post up. Then I got ready and headed out to the gardens. I had to drag the hoses for watering the new grass back to the house and put them away before I could start. It was nearly 7:30AM before I could start.
I started with the West Herb garden because the sun would come around the house to there first. These 2 gardens were cleaned out the day the heat pump installation started, July 23rd.
This half of the garden also had the worst of the invasive weed in it. That meant I was digging it out from around the plants as best I could.
Tom hadn’t been able to come out to do the foliar spraying and the rust has gotten a hold on all the mallows. The comfrey has also gotten more of the powdery mildew. The Pinion really makes a difference in these 2 areas.
The going was a bit easier when I reached the West garden, just past the hose bib. This was just easily pulled weeds and grass.
It’s too bad I lost so many plants in the cold frame this year. I’m hoping by keeping the gardens cleaned out, I’ll be able to plant them in a timely fashion next year. We’ll see…
When I reached the end of the West garden, I wasn’t very tired, so I kept going around the house.
The New North garden didn’t have much for weeds, but I’d taken some of the seeds from the foxglove and sprinkled them in the small remaining beds. The far right tiny bed had tiny ferns coming up. I had hoped we’d missed enough roots for them to do that. The Solomon’s seal on the far left survived the chaos pretty well. It has a little volunteer feverfew in that bed too.
In the North Corner garden, I had dug or pulled out a ton of anemones when the cable was installed but as expected, they were back again and NOT in their allotted bed. So I pulled them out again. I miss having the lobelia’s deep blue and the bright begonias in this bed. Maybe next year…
It was around 9:30AM when I finished this last garden so I got cleaned up, got my notes and photos and went in for a shower. I’ve had to use bug spray the last 2 weeks as the mosquitoes are finally here. There were none to speak of all summer.
When I was writing my notes on the West Herb garden, a female hummingbird came to check out the marshmallow. They have the cutest little peep noise they make and she did it to the marshmallow. After making sure the tansy wasn’t what she wanted, she came over and thoroughly inspected me. She was so close I thought she’d land on my hat. She spent a couple minutes doing this and decided she really needed something to eat and zoomed away.
I rested for a while and then made lunch and went to bed to nap. Just as I was ready to get into bed the phone rang. It was Fuel Assistance wanting to come inspect the heat pump systems at 2PM. So it was a short nap and I was up at 1:30PM.
I got the kitchen cleaned up and the laundry started while I waited. The phone rang again and it was the supplier for the promised air conditioners and dehumidifier from Fuel Assistance. But none would be delivered until September 23rd. Sigh… The guy for the heat pumps arrived and tested the systems and explained more about how they worked.
So just for ha-ha’s I asked him if he could do anything about getting the Fuel Assistance woman to call me with a DEFINITIVE answer about whether she would test the 3 freezers at the barn if I were to move them to the freezer room. He said he thought he’d see her on Tuesday and speak to her about it.
My son went out in the evening and weedwacked more of the front pasture, and a section of the middle pasture. But I won’t be able to get to those until later in the week when it stops raining.
I just sat and read all afternoon. It was to rain during the night and off and on all day Tuesday so I closed the house up. My helper friend will be here and he will feed the house plants, do errands and some chores. Once he’s gone, my #2 intern is driving me to get one of the window shades repaired, again.
I hope to get a lot done on the bills/budget during the day but we will see…
