I got out early on Friday morning and started moving the pile of mulch in the Small garden. It did ²⁄³ of the back of the garden. My backup helper arrived at 8AM and she started putting the bales down in the front of the garden. Once I got the pile moved, I put down amendment and we started bring leaves of hay we'd saved over from the driveway. There were enough to finish with some left over.
The vegetable gardens were finished! All that's left for next week is thinning carrots.
So we went over to get started in the New Herb garden. We started where my cleaning helper had left off a month ago. It had gotten hot as the sun had come out and was very humid. I soon wasn't able to be out there anymore. So I left my helper to clean out this area as it didn’t bother her.
We'd gotten the tansy cut back into its bed and she put up baling twine to contain it. I had enough dehydrated tansy so that went over the bank. Then she tackled the wormwood which wasn't bad. I needed that for the dehydrator so she brought the cuttings inside. Then she got it tied up too.
She was also cleaning out the walkways and weeding half of Row 2 as she went. When she got to the woad, she cut off all the seedheads but didn't get it tied up as it started to rain.
I had gone over into the shade of the magnolia and started to prune the spirea. It hadn't had winter kill cut off since 2019 and needed deadheaded also. I got about ¼ of it done before the sun covered it. You can see the hay pile is much reduced.
So I moved over under the magnolia and started weeding the violet bed underneath it. About 11:40 it started to rain, so we cleaned up and called it a day.
There were more Damascus roses for the dehydrator and I’d found some chamomile in the walkways of the New Herb garden so I added that too.
With the wormwood I nearly filled one dehydrator. I am so glad I have the back porch for the dehydrators. I’d shut all the windows in the house on Thursday night and the house was nice and cool and the humidity hadn’t seeped in.
In the 7th Fence garden the raspberries in the iris bed now have fruit. I sure hope I can get to this bed this year. It would be nice to have iris, if there are any left, next year.
It came through yesterday that we have entered mild drought here. I’m not sure how that works, as we’ve had rain off and on, but maybe not quite enough. I must get my rain gauge out again...
It’s to be cool and cloudy on Saturday and I haven’t decided if I am going to do some flowerbeds, like the ones around the front of the house, or resume work in the New Herb garden. I consider the 3 big gardens “work” and the flowerbeds “play” and try to get the work done before I play.
I’ve gotten ²⁄³ of the big gardens done and feel some play is due, so I might just clean out flowerbeds on Saturday.