31 March: whittling down the work list

Wednesday, 31 March 2021

Mike’s garden

Yesterday, I had realized Mike’s garden needs mulch. I happened to have a bag at home which we applied as our first work task.

Red pieris

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  Blue anemone blanda

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The Basket Case Greenhouse

Needing more mulch, we went to the Basket Case, which was not far away from our next job.

Of course, I got a few plants. My grandmother had aubretia in her rockery. I felt sentimental to see it and had to have it, along with a few violas, the purple ones for Diane.

Diane’s garden

Allan did his best to make the Stipa gigantea look better. Last time we drove by this garden, we had noticed it did not look happy. He found a bird egg and put it back even though it might be last year’s.

I wonder if Stipa gigantea just wears itself out. As you can see, there was lots of comb out, which will end up in my compost bins. Based on the post office Stipa, I think maybe cutting it back in earlier spring is better than combing it out. I hope it revives as it was the main feature of this garden.

Meanwhile, I weeded the septic vault garden and planted some bachelor button seeds…

…and started on a new project, turning the gravel strip at ground level in front of the vault into a garden of sorts. I weeded a couple of areas and planted some pink and purple California poppy seeds. Diane temporarily had a truck parked there because of her roof being worked on, so you can’t see much. I will know next time that the unweeded parts are not planted yet, and the truck was right where we need an access path anyway. I’m excited about this little project, which was inspired by nasturtiums and violas having reseeded themselves into the gravel last year.

My good friend Holly got her biscuit but no photo. Allan takes most of the photos on seeding days, as seed handling takes all my energy.

The weather turned summery and we both changed into our summer weight shirts!

The Red Barn

We made quick work of deadheading the barrels, leaving time for petting Cosmo after he read Skooter’s messages and replied with messages of his own.

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peemail

Patti’s garden

Patti had asked us to trim up some laurel. Most had already been done by her handyman, so it was more of a pleasant social visit. Stella got her biscuits.

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Patti got some gunnera starts that had lesser celandine in them. I was sorry to tell her that it is a pretty but invasive weed. In fact, I got a piece of the same gunnera, which also had celandine in it. It will go dormant in summer and is almost impossible to get rid of and my advice was that she just not worry about it unless it gets classified as a class A weed. Every tiny bulbil left in the ground in an attempt to clean it up will result in the return of this darn plant. It’s not a bad idea to wash the roots of new plants unless you are sure of the source. Advice I did not take with my piece of gunnera…

Back to Mike’s garden…

…with five more bags of mulch.

We got the smaller bags of mulch instead of bales of Soil Building Compost which, after all the rain we’ve had, feel like blocks of pure heavy mud, too much for old folks to comfortably handle. All but the back yard shade garden got a nice coat of mulch. The garden beds are heavy clay-like soil without it.

At home, I made myself a snack salad of some rather bitter winter greens that Allan does not love.

Also some chives and broad bean leaves

Yestereve and this evening, I took some photos in our garden, which will be tomorrow’s post in my continued attempt to get the blog running at least three days behind.

The work board tonight, allowing us to take five days off, although I might amble a block over to weed at the fire station.