Stuff

Today is my 69th Birthday.  Whoppee...  NEXT YEAR I will feel officially old.  I got a nice card from my Sister.  They are usually humorous, and I love those.  This one was kind of serious about appreciating a Big Brother.  That was nice too.  My Sister and I have always been close.

But I mostly enjoyed the day planting some flowers.  Not the mass yearly annual plantings of zinnias and salvia and marigolds (those are the rest of the week as I had to soak the soil today so I can pull weeds out tomorrow).  These were specialty flowers for the hummingbird/butterfly/bee bed.

Last year, I bought seeds of less-common flowers that were self-seeding for a cottage garden bed.  But I didn't plant them and the places they were to go were too over-run with weeds (and poison ivy and invasive vines).  So I planted lots of them this year, intending to clear those areas.  I didn't.

But I had tilled up the hummers/butterflies/bees (HBB) bed (it grew few flowers last year).  So I looked up the flowers and found that most of them were very attractive to the HBB bed.  So I spent the day repurposing the seedlings planting those. 

It made sense.  The commercial HBB seed packets haven't worked 2 years in a row; time to try something different.  But I HAD spread a commercial mix around the bed and there were plants coming up.

So I had to stand in the beds VERY carefully to plant the seedlings and bend around so as to not move my seedling-stomping feet.  I planted 4 Cleomes, 4 Cosmos, 9 Maltese Cross, 5 Butterfly Weed (Asclepus or something like that), and 4 of one that I forget.  And, of course, I have hopes for the seedlings that are emerging from the HBB packet.  I know some are weeds and I tried to pick them out while planting the good flowers.  I gave them a good watering.

My back is KILLING me.  That used to happen a few times a year before but it is becoming a daily annoyance.  Aspercreme helps a lot.  The heated waterbed helps at night, too.  The more common problem is hand-clenches.  If I grip things too long too hard (like mower steering wheel or loppers or pruner handles) I pay for it 2 hours later.  My fingers clench up just when I'm preparing dinner and (aside for being painful) it is really awkward.  I do a lot of fresh food prep, so when I can't hold a knife firmly, I have to be REAL careful.

While I was planting the seedlings, I was watering the weeded parts of the older garden.  I have a sprayer mounted on a tripod I built years ago and that is really good for watering a defined area for 15-20 minutes to really soak the soil down to root level.

But there is good news.  I harvested snow peas. I love those in stir fries and I get to pick them when they are fresh and tender.

Planted 15 sunflower seedlings too.  I placed 5 each around three 2' high cages for support while they adjust to sunlight and the real world.  Helps them in windy conditions too. Support 2' high is better than none.

There is also good news in the backyard where the brambles used to grow rampantly.  The brush mower really killed most of them last Fall.  Individual wild blackberries succumb to a small controlled shot of RoundUp.  I don't like that kind of stuff, but things got out of hand and I've been very specific about what I sprayed.  It is nice to see a 1' high blackberry shoot falling over.  I've targeted wild grape vines and poison ivy too.

The wild english ivy is harder to kill  and takes a couple shots.  I finally identified the invasive vine from a neighbor's yard as Vinca Major.  It is hard to kill, too.  Mowing it and then spraying the new growth seems to work well.  But it will be several attacks before it is dead in the open areas.

The hard part is that the Vinca and poison ivy have slowly infiltrated my old fence flowerbed.  I can't spray there as there are still good perennial plants.  THAT is either going to be slow careful "dig out one weed at a time" or try to dig out the plants I want to save, move them temporarily, and kill the whole area for the year.  RoundUp degrades in 3 months, so I could re-establish the plants I save (and there aren't all that many left) in late Fall.

There are shrubs along the fence and I can't move THOSE, but I was planning to cut them down anyway as they are really too large.  So my plan for those is to take new-growth stem-cuttings, dip them in a rooting hormone, and set them in 4" pots to regrow.  I have some ideas of where I can plant some along the fence in the far backyard where they are welcome to grow large, some along the drainage easement (fake creek), and some polite ones (nandina) along the edge of the front yard to make a border.

And I had a nice discovery!  In the backyard, there was a bramble plant that that I thought was wild blackberrybut it had a slightky different flower and a nice scent.  I did some research and discovered it was an old wild rose I think is called 'Hawthorne Rose'.  It was a casualty of the "clearing of the wild brambles". 



But last week, I noticed what appeared to be wild blackberry flowers growing up through a Burning Bush and went to get the loppers to cut it out of the shrub.  But then I was thrilled to smell the scent!  It was a volunteer of the Hawthorne Rose I had lost...  I will take a few dozen cuttings of it hoping some will grow.  Meanwhile, the Rose and the Burning Bush will live intertwined for a year.  I don't want to risk losing it again.

Back to the wild blackberries...  Looking over the fence in all directions, it seems that my yard is the only one with wild blackberries in it.  I recall that there was a single patch in a corner of the front yard when I moved here.  It must have spread from there.  I love rasperries.  I mention that because wild blackberries carry a virus that doesn't harm them much but it is death to rasperries with a about 200'.  So If I can kill off the wild blackberries, I can grow raspberries again.  I'd like that!

That's enough for today.  I'm going to feed the cats, clean the litter boxes for the night, and haul my weary back into bed...