On Friday morning I’d planned to go out with my helper friend and general helper and clean up the Fence gardens. But the fog had rolled in after sunrise and it was cold out there.
This didn’t deter my helper friend, he went out and started cutting the tall stuff off the Fence gardens. I forgot to get a before photo so these from December will have to do.
I did get this one before he tackled this section.
My general helper and I tackled the upstairs plants and got them finished. Then we came downstairs and picked up where we’d left off in the office. We did the 2 floor plants, a clivia and a ponytail in this window.
She had gotten the huge Christmas cactus done when the sun came out. So we cleaned up and went outside. I still have the 2 floor plants, a night blooming cerces and an unknown on the right side, to do next time.
The lilacs had never been deadheaded last year, so she took on that job.
By the time we got outside, my helper friend had cleaned off all the tall stuff on this section. I thought I should rake the leaves off before they blew all over the yard. There was enough grass to protect what remained in these gardens. They haven’t been worked on since 2019.
The ground is still mostly frozen so we couldn’t do any weeding here.
The gardens look so much better without all the leaves and tall stuff. There’s still a huge amount of weeding to do though.
My helper friend did the pruning on the bottoms of the forsythia and the lilac in these sections. After he left my general helper and I pruned the tops to keep them from swiping my hat off and from hitting cars coming up the driveway.
This 7th Fence garden was an iris bed with lots of iris in 2019. But the raspberries moved in and I don’t know what’s left. We found a few tips sprouting. It will have to be dug out down a foot to get the raspberry roots out and replanted. There were also a lot of spring bulbs in here too.
I did a little bit of raking here, mostly under the MacIntosh. The big job in this area will be pruning the roses back into their bed. The lilacs were pruned well last year, but until leaves come out it’s hard to know what is deadwood.
About 11AM the sun disappeared and the wind came up. I probably should have quit, but I really wanted to finish this job, so my general helper and I pressed on. I was pretty exhausted by noon when we finished.
I had saved her cuttings from the plants I had done on Thursday and she had collected forsythia branches to force to flowers and then she left.
I had to go to the opticians to get new glasses made in the afternoon. The frames from the tumble down stairs were too bent to use, even after trying to straighten them. I had the pair I’d found but didn’t like them that much. They were for backup, fortunately.
So I selected a new frame, of course one of the more expensive ones. But it was the only one remotely similar to the broken ones. Glasses are so expensive! Fortunately the new health insurance covered ¾ of the cost.
Once home again, I parked on the couch and only left to make a simple meal, do chores, light stoves and pull shades. It had been exhilarating to be outside in the sun when it was so warm and nice. We all had been working in shirt sleeves. But that wind and cold at the end did me in.
It’s not to be so warm on Saturday, though sunny, so I will stay inside and perhaps finish all the bills for the last 2 months