Fall Weather Looks Good Right Now

This heat is horrible. The heat index for the past few days has been over 100 degrees. The only thing I can stand to do outside is go from the air conditioning in the house to the air conditioning in the car. I have so much more to do outside in the gardens and am hoping the weather next week (when the forecast is in the high 80s)will give us some relief.

Whew! What A Busy Week

I have been busy for the past week in this 98+ degree heat getting my back bed in shape. I am very happy to say it is at least 85% finished for the year. I have never had this bed that close to being complete, and what a rush it is! I have the two White Moth Hydrangeas and the two Pinky Winky Hydrangeas to plant into the middle tier of the bed. There are numerous perennials to put into the same area.

Ashley and Jason visited with us over last weekend. They arrived on Saturday evening and left to go to North Carolina early Monday evening. On Sunday evening we had a cookout and musical get together. Ashley & Jason, Bob & Peg, Steve Maxwell, Bobby Wilborn and the next door neighbors were all present to visit with us. Hymie smoked pork and chicken for the cookout (absolutely wonderful). Monday morning I headed to pick up Ash to meet Peg and head for City Girls. The hose on the Lexus that had been leaking once before started leaking again. I was afraid it would over heat so I had Jason take Ash and me to meet Peg. We went to City Girls and ate at Rapheals next door. Peg took us to meet Jason at Becky's Shoes in Cleveland. No one found shoes, except Peg. It was sad to see the kids leave, seems they just got here. We had so much MORE TO DO! I wonder if we'll ever have enough time to get it all done??????

Working Wednesday

I spent the day outside (in the humid heat ... yukk). I worked on the back garden, moving some empty containers and excess plants to the upper side of the privacy fenced area. It was really miserable out, but I wanted to get some weeding done and these things moved.

I took some photos for Ashley and to post here.

Veggie Garden:


Salmon Nasturtium:


Chim Chiminee Rudbeckia:


Red Nasturtiums:

Saturday or is it Sunday???

DH took Friday off work, and I have felt as if it was Sunday all day today......how inconsiderate of him to confuse my weekend like this....LOL

Yesterday I worked in the yard for a few hours helping DH load up some junk for the dump, and I finished up with cleaning the front porch steps. They need to be cleaned several times a year with bleach water to get the greenish moss off them. When it rains, those steps are slippery but not so much when cleaned regularly. I also started potting the two Crimson Mandevilla to hang on the side yard white fence. I had planned to spray the front bed with roundup as soon as all the dew was dried on the weeds and grass just before noon or so . But................................

Around noon I received a call from DH's Mom asking me to go to Parkridge Hospital in Chatt. to pick up her husband, Tom. He had a pacemaker put in this week and needed a ride home. It took me until around 4:30 that evening to get everything done (prescriptions & groceries picked up for them etc). By the time I got home, I was "done in".

I have been trying to get the front bed sprayed with round up for two weeks now and have had rain showers everyday, some very heavy. I am distressed that the bermuda grass is getting larger and tougher with each day of heat and rain. Hopefully tomorrow I can get it sprayed. That is the lowest percentage of chance of rain we have had recently. It has come a couple of showers off and on today as well. Seems every time I head out with the spayer, the dark clouds gather. This roundup stuff is so expensive, I have no plans to use it unless I know we will have most of the day without rain.

Late this evening, I decided to do my weekly week whacking in the veggie garden and found my first squash. There were actually two but decided to leave the other one on the plant until tomorrow evening when I cook dinner.......that will give it a day to grow just a slight bit more. The one I pulled was a really good sized one that somehow I had overlooked............it is still tender but had DH not noticed it and told me about it today, it could have gotten tough before I noticed it. Amazing how fast squash plants produce. These have not been in the ground long and to have been grown from seed, they are doing really well.

Reading on GardenWeb this evening about favorite garden related quotes, I remembered and posted a reply about something my Mother told me when I was a little girl. Even now when I smell a rose with dew drops all over it, I feel warm and fuzzy remembering that day, what she said to me and how loved she made me feel. Thank you, Mother!

"Seeds are given by God to eventually bless us with joy. You were once as a seed and now you are someone's joy!"

This is one of my first memories with my Mom out among her flowers, while holding a dewy rose under my nose to smell and hugging me close, she told me this.

Busy Week and Heavy Rains

This week seems to have flown by. Wednesday evening I saw what a flash flood must be like. In about a five minute period of rain, there was over an ankle's depth of water standing in our back yard, with muddy water rushing down our driveway like a river. You couldn't see the driveway, only the muddy red water. The two drains in our back yard couldn't handle the amount of water fast enough to keep it from flooding. The end of the drains at the side of the yard has never done more than a heavy trickle. This is what the "heavy trickle" looked like Wednesday:

What A Really Strange Past Two Days

Monday:

I called Jimmy (works for Tony & Mike...also Mike's BIL) and his girlfriend, Pam, to ask them over to dig up some plants I had promised to give them a few weeks ago. I was glad to see the pampas grass in the back edge of my back garden go. I was also giving Pam the yukka plants in the front flower bed. I had dug out about half of it last summer and just gave up. Anyway, Jimmy is young and strong so I kept insisting that they take ALL of the yukka. After having him go back and dig more of the roots up, even he was exhausted. At least I have a start on that front bed that has had me so intimidated, and they have some adult plants to begin some new beds.

I hoed weeds and watered the veggie garden. The bulk of the afternoon was spent using my mini-hedge trimmer to cut back the ivy on the front porch posts and the front and side sections of the underpinned area of the porch. Its growth was getting out of hand. It now looks like a young kid just back from the barber shop with his new summer cut!

Tuesday:

Jimmy was to come back this morning, after a call from me, to dig up a really large lorepetulum shrub to transplant to the entrance of one of Tony's subdivisions. Angie (Tony's wife) was going with Jimmy to the subdiv. to make sure the shrub got planted correctly and watered in well. I was up around 7 AM to iron a shirt for DH. At 7:20 I decided to step out onto the porch to feed the cats and discovered that Jimmy was parked outside.........just about that time he came around the house with the large shrub thrown over his shoulder to load into the truck. Thinking he would get an early start on the day and not bother me, he had started the work without me...............my heart sank as I saw the roots of the plant had been severed and there was no root ball of dirt with the shrub. Not know any better, he assumed the shrub could be dug up as carelessly as the yukkas the day before. I had planted this lorepetulum when it was about six inches high to grow for the subdivision entrances. It was now huge and perhaps four-five feet high x three to four feet wide. I doubt the shrub will make it, but Angie has potted it, placed it in shade, and will keep it watered for a while just to see if it will recover. So instead of gardening like I had planned to do all day today, I now had to go with Angie and Jimmy to try to find a suitable tree or shrub to plant at the entrance of Wildewood. Angie went to HDepot and Lowes at Hamilton Place while I went to their stores at Ft. O. I found a lovely purple/red leafed Forest Pansy Redbud (about 8' tall) on sale for $20 at HD. Angie and Jimmy met me, picked up the tree, tree support and tree trunk protector & went to plant the tree. Angie called me later to tell me it really looked great. What a stressful morning this was!!!

Later today, I mixed the poison ivy Round-Up in the sprayer and started to work on the vines up the side of the new yard and in the bed areas where I want to plant oakleaf hydranges, hosta, etc. I also resprayed the area inside the kennel fence and was surprised to see that the leaves on the vines were dying back from the spraying I gave them last week. So glad to see that.

I will spray the front bed in the morning around 11AM after the sun dries the grass and weeds from the night dew. I also plan to clear the back bed of all the unused pots (putting them inside kennel area privacy fence) tomorrow morning so I can see what areas I have to work with more clearly. I'll start using those areas for plants and not storing unused pots out of DH yard.

DH's sister called yesterday about Mark and his wife expecting their first baby just after the first of next year.

..

Lazy Sunday

DH and I decided to take a short trip today along the 90 mile Hwy 41 Yardsale. Lots of interesting stuff.............kinda' hated to waste my energy and the early part of the day on this because the yard beckons, but I can work some this evening AFTER MY NAP!!!!

Later:
Well, no nap taken and I only got the two gardens and the veggie garden watered this evening. Amazing how fast this day went by. I met Peggie around 7PM at Ft. O to pick up my Choco Vine. We ate at Wendy's, yapping the whole time like a gaggle of geese!

I just read an email from a friend concerning a story of an American World War II pilot, This poem was in that email. I really liked the poem and wanted to save it here:

"The clock of life is wound but once, and no man has the power to tell just when the hands will stop, at late or early hour. Now is the only time you own. Live, love, toil with a will. Place no faith in time. For the clock may soon be still."

Paint Job Saturday

We have workers in today painting the new carport and grill shed. I got up this AM at 6 to move cars and get all my gardening "stuff" out of the way for their arrival. While I was waiting, I hoed weeds in the veggie garden for about thirty minutes. Everything is looking good but the squash and zucchini vines were laying kinda' sideways this morning as if we had had some wind last night.

I looked over my directions for putting the green house together last night, and it's not as intimidating as first appeared. I actually think it might be done in about twice the time it took Ashley to do hers!!!! :-)

Speaking of Ashley.....she had an auto accident today in the jeep (making a trip to pick up mulch). A girl in a pickup truck, coming toward her, turned left across traffic in front of her. Thank goodness Ashley was unhurt, but the jeep may have serious problems, such as being totaled!

Monday, Monday

Another hot clear day .... I got a late start to the morning because I couldn't sleep last night. By the time I was out of bed this AM, it was already too hot to be out in the sun. Ashley and I had a long conversation this morning about her herb container, and we posted an inquiry on the herb forum, along with photos.

Late this afternoon I watered the veggie garden and both the flower gardens. Some of my potted plants are already suffering from lack of moisture, even with all the rain we had last week. Potted plants are a pain in the *&^! I must get a few of the drip irrigation hoses done for the containers I don't plan to plant out into the gardens. The porch shade beds are starting to fill in nicely, though I have not done anything with the first bed in that trio yet. It has some potted plants sitting in it but nothing really planted. I think I will put the peppermint hydrangea and the two white hydrangeas in that bed for now. They are all showing a lot of budding...........very happy to see them doing well as these are new to the hydrangea world. I was unsure how they would return this summer. Photo of them last year:

The front bed is truly a nightmare. I am horrified that it is full of bermuda grass. I really am at a loss as to whether I will even be able to save it or not. I keep putting off doing that bed because I am so worried about it. That doesn't make sense.....seems that should be the first thing I try to do, but I think it makes me feel overwhelmed. Wow is there a lot to do here!