On Thursday I was up at 5AM and got the photos edited and the post written and up. Then I cleaned the kitchen up and was outside in the gardens by 7AM.
I’d changed plans and decided to weed the 4 front gardens as they had been done before and badly needed it. I started with the New West as I’d done half of it a couple weeks ago.
Then I did the 2 tiny Steps gardens. I was delighted to discover the mum in the West of Steps garden wasn’t dead as I thought. It’s very small but alive and growing. I’d lost a couple plants I’d put in the East of Steps though.
My #2 intern had gotten a lot of the weeds out by the sweet peas in the South garden. So I finished up the rest of that garden. My clematis has died though. And the chocolate mint again escaped the pot, so I had to pull a lot of roots.
Once those 4 front gardens were done, I moved to the back of the house before the sun reached where I was working. The ferns weren’t as bad as I had feared. I must have hacked them back last year and forgotten. But they had invaded the pink lily of the valley, so I had to dig them out of there and get more soil to fill in.
I had finished these 5 gardens by 10AM so I decided to tackle the Old North garden, as it’s only 12’ long.
This one is one of the oldest gardens, since 1984 or there abouts. The weeds had killed off some of the plants. But the bloodroot, Sweet William, and marshmallow have done very well.
I emptied another tray of plants in the cold frame, planting Canterbury Bells, snapdragons, verbascum, zinnias, and portulaca. There’s just 1 tray left, mostly Sweet Williams.
In the process of cleaning out weeds and dumping filled sleds, I realized I hadn’t done the West Shed garden recently. So I still have 1 more to do, plus weed and deadhead in the New Herb garden. Once those are done, I will be caught up I think. Oops, nope, I have to do the rosebed as that was done this year and needs it badly.
And I need to do both vegetable gardens as they’ve not been done in weeks. Sigh…
Then I can move onto ones that have not been done yet this year. That probably would be the trees area by the Big garden. There are 6 gardens there, mostly small ones.
But it’s only the middle of August, so I should be able to resurrect at least 1 of the Fence gardens before it’s too cold to work outside.