On Thursday it was to be a beautiful day, warm and sunny. I planned to get a lot done outside. But as I waited for it to warm up, I spent the time on the phone and computer, trying to find the missing materials for the root cellar. It took 3 orders, but I think I now have everything. I finished up around 9:30 and headed outside.
I didn’t have a definite plan in mind, just cleaning out dead stuff from gardens. In the South garden I found this single bloom on one of the hollyhocks I’d cut back about 6 weeks ago.
The rain had knocked the chrysanthemums down, so I tied them back up. This is the East of Steps one.
I was delighted to see the goldy color I’d bought them for had finally come through.
After a little bit of clean-up in the South garden, I moved into the New Herb garden. The very first job was to get the seed heads off the garlic chives in Row 7. They hadn’t yet dried up so it was easy. Some years I am too late and they spray around as the stem is cut.
I planned to have my helper friend get this sunflower out of the walkway on Friday, so I cut the head off and set it on the corner fence of the Small garden for the birds. It still had all its seeds.
Then I decided to save seed from the calendula. I’d used up most of what I’d had.
I did the orange ones first, then some of the yellow.
I thought having some Tulsi basil (lower right) would be wise, and I saved some boneset too (upper right). I checked to see if the orange butterflyweed had set more pods and saved some of those.
Then I set about taking out things that had died in the previous frosts, like the echinacea paradoxa. The pyrethrum next to it was full of some weed I’d not seen before.
It had apparently come in on one of the hay bales because it had infested the whole end of Row 4 and also Row 3. I pulled out as much of it as I could find.
I got half of the Tulsi basil out of Row 2 and all of the marigolds. The blue flax between them was still flowering, as was the tansy at the end. I did a small amount of weeding on Row 1, and pulled off the rest of the butterflyweed pods. They make an awful mess when they open.
By then it was 11:30 and I’d done a lot of standing and up-and-down pulling the new weed. Standing and up-and-down wear me out really fast which is why I try to avoid it if I can. I was getting pretty tired and still had the yard to mow, so I cleaned up and went inside for lunch.
As I headed for the front steps, I looked up and noticed at least half the leaves had come off the white oak. This was good and bad: good, because they’d all be off soon and I could take the tarps off the Small garden; bad because it meant the leaves would be pretty deep on that side of the house and the mower doesn’t do well with that.
There’s still a lot of dead stuff in the New Herb garden but I will have my helper friend work on it on Friday.
As I was going around the house to put things away, I noticed that the oaks were the only ones with leaves now along the driveway.
I discovered that the little catalpa still had most of its leaves. Usually when the first hard frost came, the giant old catalpa would rain leaves all day and be nearly bare by the next day. We’ve had several hard frosts already, but I guess being that close to the trees on the tree line had protected it.
After lunch I went out and started mowing up leaves. They were as deep as I feared and it took a long time to get them up. I figure I have one more mowing to do before it’s done for the year.
My tenant got home just after 5PM and we went down to the root cellar to start getting the 2 holes drilled through the wall. The drill bits we had weren’t long enough to make it through the 2” joist, ½” sheathing, 1” insulation, and then the siding. So I went up to the barn and found a long sharp drill bit and finally we knew where the holes would come out.
I was afraid the second one would be right where the drainpipe is, and of course, it was. That will have to be re-anchored off to the side when we are done working outside.
We’d gotten a 6” hole saw and my tenant had his heavy duty drill and we got them cut. Then we tried to put the pipe through and discovered the hole was precisely 6” and the O.D. of the pipe was precisely 6” and it wasn’t going in.
He had a Dremel in his car and we were able to pare the siding and insulation back enough to get the pipes into that. But the wood was too much for it. He thinks he has a bigger one at his dad’s and will get that on Friday.
The most important part of the hole was getting the siding done before it got too cold and it cracked when working on it. The cold was returning Thursday night so we had to get it done.
So we pushed the pipe pieces in as far as we could and covered the ends with wire screening to keep the critters out. We’ll continue work on the weekend as far as we can until we run out of parts. Some are due in mid week and I don’t have delivery date for the rest of them.
On Friday it’s to be cloudy and cold, so I plan to harvest the celery and get it processed for celery salt.