12 May: before work

Friday, 12 May 2023

at home

We stayed home till three because of a short work day, which was happening because of the annoying need to start watering before mid May! Usually, we can count on not having to water before Mother’s Day, which is when we start to plant annuals.

We addressed the problem of the little dogs next door coming through the greenhouse. The barrier that our neighbours had put up had something missing in its concept.

One of the greenhouses now has a plastic baby gate propped up in it, the other a piece of framed wire mesh, and Allan solidified the neighbors’ barrier that I showed above.

Allan put up the Great Wall of China, which is more difficult now with the new plant tables.

While he had the long ladder out, he checked the gutters from the roof and took some wonderful photos.

unweeded front garden:

I looked around the garden from front to back.

The frog bog at the south border is lower than I have ever seen it in early May because of the sudden dry warmth. I hope the rain has not ceased and gone to summer-like weather this soon.

In the garden, I questioned the identity of this plant that seems to be running…Is it something I planted or something to to be feared? Two days later, I asked on the Plant Idents Facebook group.

NOOOO! It is ground elder. I have battled the variegated form in someone else’s garden and lost. I am horrified. Between that and the sudden influx of poison hemlock, I am wondering if it is coming in somehow through the highly processed and heated biosolids mulch, which is mixed with arborist chips, which might have some plant material in them. Because…how else? I use it all over Long Beach, though, and have never seen such a nefarious weed appear there. So perhaps a bit of a root was mixed with a nursery plant that I bought from somewhere or other. (Later, a weed expert told me that weed seeds can travel on the trucks that deliver mulch and get introduced that way!) I will battle this weed on next day off.

Now…off to work. It is very hard to leave for work in the afternoon.