14 December: weeding and bulbing

Thursday, 14 December 2017

Finally, I got eight hours of sleep.  Unfortunately, after being up till all hours watching meteors, that meant a late start to the weeding day.

In the front garden, I partially weeded the beds from east to west in order to plant crocuses, so I can count those beds as almost done.

If I had not clipped a lot of Geranium ‘Rozanne’ in Long Beach town, I bet it would still be blooming there like it is in my garden.  This summer weather in winter is surprising.  Usually, my blog would be on a partial winter hiatus now because of inactivity.

Geranium ‘Rozanne’ in mid December

a stand of borage still covered with stars of blue flowers

You can float the blue flowers on a soup or use them in salads.  Just carefully pull the blue stars off the fuzzy part.

Today was a bit chillier and slightly more seasonal. Skooter helped me again.

between me and my crocuses

With the front garden packed with new crocuses, I returned to weeding the west bed so that I could plant some down the center there.  Allan walked by at just the right moment (for me, probably the wrong moment for him), and I asked him to remove a nest of Solidago ‘Fireworks’ mixed with rampant creeping buttercup.  If he had not, I would have run out of daylight and been unable to erase “west bed” from the weeding list.

creeping buttercup mess, before (Allan’s photo)

Skooter (Allan’s photo)

Once I broke up the dug up mass of this medium height clumping goldenrod, I ended up with a surprising amount of good clumps that I can plant around Long Beach and at the boatyard. Today and Tuesday, two members of the Peninsula Gardeners Facebook group had come to pick up the  hardy fuchsia pieces that Allan had dug up two days ago.  It’s a pity that I did not have clumps of the excellent goldenrod to share at that time.

Skooter inspects the job (Allan’s photo)

after, with crocuses placed and Skooter enjoying the new clearing

I filled the area with a Helenium ‘Sahin’s Early Flowerer” that had been lost in the middle of the garden bed.

at dusk, west bed weeded and crocused up

All the paths are a mess now and need a good raking (or mowing).  Allan has been coming along behind me with a rake, doing some of the tidying, and he ran the string trimmer all along the edges.

As the light faded, I got the last 50 crocuses planted in three beds around the campfire area.

Danger Tree bed

two of the three big beds I’ve weeded this week

dusk

sunset next door

across the street

I still have not even put up our own Christmas tree, and I have a feeling it may not happen this year, unless the weather becomes properly wintry very soon.

I was able to do some satisfying erasures, and I changed the “Good weeding” to just “weeding”.  I have to admit it has not been a perfect job.

Tomorrow, rain and some wind may return, and we must go to a late afternoon political rally, and so we might as well try, if the weather is not too bad, to accomplish a few of the “post frost check ups”.  Without frost, I will just call them pre-holiday checks ups.  I long to clear the board of work and be fully on staycation.  Maybe if “call accountant” is the last thing on the work side of the board, I will make myself find a new accountant (our nice local one retired) before it is too late.