I went to group therapy
this morning.
I’ll bet you didn’t know that
I do that once in a while - although not often enough lately.
The others there were pretty
quiet, but I had a lot to say. They did
remark, though, that they were feeling crowded, or even run over by others, or
were having trouble standing, or just plain tired. Some were feeling very well and looking it.
I was in the Garden and it
needed some work. I had neglected it for
several weeks, now, and most of it was a mess.
I decided to start at the beginning and go to the end, but didn’t make
it that far and will have to finish tomorrow or Saturday.
The ajuga looked good and was thriving,
even though it doesn’t get all the water it needs. We’ve had enough rain to keep it going, but
it will need more to spread. There were
no complaints from the ajuga except for wanting an intruding weed or two moved
elsewhere.
I planted the ajuga along the
broken edge of the patio. It has a lot of shade most of the day. I’ve wrapped it around two of the porch posts
to cover up both the concrete used to set them and that crumbling edge. I have planted it most places I’ve lived
since it is a tough plant, flowers are nice, leaves are attractive, and it’s
not aggressive.
Next to check out was the little circle
of Bethlehem star. It’s doing fine right
now and early next spring I’ll give it a little more room by spreading the rock
circle a little. It only needed a few
runners of grass taken out; the grass also thought it was a fine place to be
growing.
I pulled a few weeds from the
pathway. I’ve used sawdust and shavings
from The Shop and that has really worked out well. The weeds are slow coming through - in fact,
most of what I pull is seedling trees, which blow in from above, or seeds from
those marguerite daisies planted under the redbud. It makes a good layer to kneel on while
working the beds, isn’t muddy when it rains (!), and is soft to walk on, but
not too soft. Goldilocks would like it.
I went to the shed to get my
weed bucket and found this:
The web was from the top of
the opening to the ground and from side to side across the opening. I took photos first, in case I messed up the
web getting the bucket.
What amazed me was the size
and color. Usually we get brown or black
spiders, but not colored ones. I haven’t
seen this spider (and this link) before and will have to look it up on the Internet.
Later, in one of the other
beds, I did see a round black spider with bright red spots on the back - kind
of like a lady bug, in reverse. I’ll
have to look that one up, too. I did and can only find a black widow spider shown for red and black. I'd swear, though, that this one didn't have the hourglass, but spots instead.
This artemesia was determined to take over
the pathway, the lawn, and had engulfed the small metal table Mom needed to set
things on while filling the feeder above.
I’ve seen several places
around town where the homeowner is using Powis Castle almost as a ground cover,
it spreads so nicely. It doesn’t spread
by runners, or roots, just by becoming Large.
And nothing seems to grow under it to come up through and need removing. But that may be that the gardners who are
growing it are tending the bed carefully.
I gave it a buzz-cut on the path side.
See - didn’t even move the table, just uncovered it.
On the lawn side I had built
a low stone “wall”, more for decoration than anything else. Now it was time to get serious. I pulled out most of the rocks and started
re-doing the wall, building it quite a bit higher. I ruthlessly trimmed the artemesia; I wanted
to keep it off the grass - where it had previously sprawled - for ease in edging,
and to show off the stones. It took me a
while to figure out what I wanted from our stone pile and then to get them
balanced. Most of the rocks are chunks,
and it was a trick to get them to stay stable enough they couldn’t be easily
knocked over. Some broken pavers
standing between the limbs and the stones will keep them from caving in - I
hope. I finally did manage to get the
rocks to fit pretty well, too. This is the finish from the
lawn.
I went to the end of the
long, dry bed next. It was a sad
sight. The creeping thyme had galloped
instead; the achillea had fallen over everyone else in the neighborhood,
including the stronger, taller sage; the marigolds were being smothered; the Spanish lavender was
pushing out it’s neighbors; the Provence lavender was . . .
the Provence lavender! where was
it??? Yuck.
The yard (and thus the
garden) slopes just a little. Barely
noticeable unless you’re at the bottom of the slope. Guess where I planted the likes-high-and-dry
lavender.
A front page newspaper
article last week gives this information about rainfall amounts from January 1st
to August 12th in the wettest cities in the country . . .
Oklahoma City, normal (not
counting drought?) 22.89 inches; received so far 43.77
Miami, normal (does that
count hurricanes?) 34.62 inches; received so far 40.09
Seattle, normal (we believe Seattleites
have webbed feet) 19.96; received so far 18.22 inches
Houston, normal (I’ll bet
most of this does come during
hurricane season!) 29.37; received so far 18.02
Portland, normal 19.95;
received so far 14.57
What surprises me is that,
according to this article, our normal is higher than the West Coast
places.
You can tell that we’ve had
excessive, but welcome, rainfall this year.
No wonder the lavender gave up and expired.
There are some green bits
still in this mess, so maybe I can rescue one or two. I’m also going to build a rock wall along
this edge of the DRY bed and raise the dirt so the next lavender will have a
better chance at keeping the roots in good shape.
On the way to the workroom to get
scissors, I noticed this. Mom picked up
a rock somewhere that is roughly shaped like the Oklahoma outline. It leans against a stump, which leans against
the redbud trunk. That’s a lot of
leaning . . . The ants have decided to
hasten along the decay of the stump, and are digging out the inside. They are Tiny Ants. So tiny that they don’t show up in this
photo. What workaholics they must
be!
Mom came out to take a look
and spotted this in the redbud -
Isn't this the loveliest thing you ever saw?
I wanted to touch the fungi and see if they were as
velvety as they looked, but restrained myself.
When I was ready to stop for
the day, this is what I had accomplished.
The chair is full of cuttings from the Spanish lavender waiting for me to spread it on old window screens to dry. The armloads of artemesia clippings I piled around a decaying tree stump to
the east of the garden, along the fence line.
They look nice there and will
take a bit to decompose themselves. I also
hope they will ward off the neighbor’s critter who uses the stump for a stile
and makes a mess in the garden. We’ll
see.
The bucket has the thyme I
pulled out, roots and all. I’m taking it
home to put in a flower bed there. What
doesn’t still have roots, I’ll dry.
This is the current view from
the gate at the bottom of the yard.
I was glad to see so much
wildlife in the garden, in addition to the birds and earthworms. More to come another day . . .
